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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Fruit

Rice pudding made with boiled rice, currants, egg, butter, and sugar, boiled in a cloth and served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice as you would for curry.

  2. Once the rice is cold, mix it with currants, egg, butter, and sugar.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a floured cloth.

  2. Boil for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce.

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

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

  2. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, tender body when cooked.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape after boiling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the fruit.
Currants
Add fruit flavour, sweetness and small pockets of chewy texture.

The step that matters

Tying the mixture in the cloth. The cloth must be floured and the mixture packed firmly but with room to swell. A loose wrap can let water in and make the pudding soggy, while a tight one can stop the rice from expanding as it cooks.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, butter, 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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