Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
To Serve Cold 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.
Prepare the bread
Soak the bread in plenty of water overnight, with a plate on top to keep it submerged.
The next morning, pour off and squeeze out excess water.
Mix and bake
Mash the soaked bread and mix in flour, currants, suet, sugar, and cinnamon.
Grease a baking dish with suet, add the mixture, and bake for 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).
Alternatively, tie the mixture in a floured cloth, place it in boiling water with a plate at the bottom, and boil for the same time.
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.
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Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,341 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,099 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,705 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
- Stale bread
- Its dried, starchy crumb soaks up water and binds the pudding into a soft mass.
- Flour
- Adds body and helps hold the mashed bread together as it cooks.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps give the cooked pudding a browned surface.
- Currants
- Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Squeezing out the soaked bread. Excess water left in the bread dilutes the mixture and makes the pudding soggy and loose. Squeezing it well lets the bread hold its shape and bind with the other ingredients as it cooks.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, cinnamon):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, cinnamon. 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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