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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, butter, molasses, raisins, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and raisin work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 565 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Mix the ingredients in the order given.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 3 hours at 300°F (150°C), stirring 3 times during the first hour to prevent the rice from settling.

  2. When stirring for the last time, add the butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + raisintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Butter + molassestop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and softens during slow baking, forming the body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color, and a caramel-like flavor while keeping the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness that contrast with the soft rice.

The step that matters

Stirring during the first hour. Rice grains are heavier than the liquid and sink to the bottom as they cook. Stirring three times in the first hour keeps them suspended, so the pudding bakes evenly instead of forming a dense layer at the base.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, molasses):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More rice pudding recipes

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