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Dessert

Rice Lemon Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from milk, rice flour, butter, lemon zest and juice, eggs, sugar, and optional wine.

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 ↓

Rice Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the rice flour moistened in a little milk and let it come to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and add the butter.

Add the flavourings

  1. Once cool, mix in the lemon peel, lemon juice, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Sweeten to taste and add wine 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. 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
Rice flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the mixture, while whites add lightness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the eggs. Adding egg yolks and whites to a very hot mixture can scramble them, leaving lumps. Letting the base cool first lets the eggs blend in smoothly and keeps the pudding silky.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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