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Dessert

Oxford Pudding

A rice pudding with sultanas, apples, and cinnamon, boiled until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Oxford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Mix the rice with sultanas, chopped apples, cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Tie the mixture in a cloth, leaving room for swelling.

Cook

  1. Boil in plenty of water for 1½ hours until the rice is soft.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Rice
Starch swells and softens in boiling water, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Sultanas
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit through the soft rice.
Apples
Release moisture and natural sweetness as they cook, adding fruity softness to the pudding.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the sweet fruit and rice.

The step that matters

Leave room for swelling in the cloth. Rice grains absorb water and expand substantially as they cook. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the swelling mixture has nowhere to go and the bag can burst or the pudding can cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon, sugar. 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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