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Plain Rice Puddinc

A simple rice pudding made with rice, pimento, water, butter, sugar, milk, optional lemon peel and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Plain Rice Puddinc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the rice.

  2. Add the finely ground pimento, but use sparingly.

  3. Tie the rice in a cloth, leaving room for it to swell.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the rice in a large quantity of water for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Serve with butter and sugar, or milk.

  3. Add lemon peel 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and softens as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
Pimento
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavour when used in small amounts.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the plain, starchy rice.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the cooked rice.

The step that matters

Leave room in the cloth for the rice to swell. Rice starch absorbs water and expands greatly as it boils and softens. A tight tie restricts that expansion, so the grains cannot swell fully and the texture suffers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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