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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made from rice, milk, butter, sugar, and nutmeg, often served with raisins, currants, or apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk, stirring to prevent burning.

  2. When it thickens, remove from heat and let cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Grease a baking dish and pour in the mixture.

  3. Bake until set, adding raisins, currants, or apples if desired.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs milk and swells, giving the pudding its body as it thickens.
Milk
Liquid that the rice cooks in, providing creaminess and the base of the custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Stirring while the rice boils. Rice starch and milk sugars settle on the bottom of the pan and scorch easily over direct heat. Constant stirring keeps the mixture moving so it thickens evenly without a burnt taste.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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