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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, eggs, ground rice, butter, sugar, and lemon, lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Combine milk, beaten eggs, and ground rice in a saucepan.

  2. Boil while stirring until thickened.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over butter, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice. Stir until combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding structure as it cooks.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and ground rice set into.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky base under the filling.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring until thickened. Ground rice must boil to swell and thicken the milk fully; stopping early leaves a thin filling, while letting it stick or scorch on the pan bottom gives a burnt taste. Constant stirring keeps the starch and egg from clumping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, rice, butter, sugar. 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

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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