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 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.
Cook the rice
Boil the rice in milk until soft.
Stir in the butter or suet and let it cool.
Finish and set
Once cooled, mix in the eggs, sugar, and currants.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) or boil until set.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Softens into the pudding and gives it body as it cooks in the milk.
- Milk
- Forms the creamy liquid base that the rice absorbs and that sets into the custard.
- Eggs
- Set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a firm, custard-like structure.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the milk and eggs.
- Butter or suet
- Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
The step that matters
Let the rice cool before adding the eggs. Eggs scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Cooling the rice mixture first lets the eggs blend in smoothly and set evenly into a uniform custard.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, 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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