Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding with milk, eggs, sugar, lemon, and optional fruit, topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in a custard kettle with the water and salt until dry.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in the milk and add it to the rice; boil again.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  4. Stir the beaten yolks into the rice mixture.

  5. Add the lemon juice and rind.

Bake and top

  1. Optionally, add raisins, peaches, pineapple, oranges, or dried cherries before baking.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) until set.

  3. Beat the egg whites with the sugar.

  4. Spread the beaten whites over the top of the pudding.

  5. Brown the whites in the oven.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

  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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it cooks.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess as the rice softens and thickens.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture so it sets into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a meringue that browns on top.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Brown the whites in the oven. Meringue can weep or brown unevenly if underbaked or overbaked. Watch closely so the top turns golden while the pudding beneath stays set.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes