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Dessert

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

An eggless rice pudding baked with milk, rice, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a well-buttered deep pudding dish, combine milk, rice, sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

  3. Stir the mixture once or twice until it begins to cook.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven for about 2 hours until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice cooks in and forms the creamy base of the pudding.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly on the surface as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until creamy. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and milk proteins and sugars thicken and set slowly in the oven. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it thin, while overbaking can make it dry and stiff, so judge by a creamy consistency rather than the clock alone.

“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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