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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and lemon, finished with a browned egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice pudding

  1. Boil rice in salted water until dry.

  2. Add milk to the rice.

  3. Boil until thick.

  4. Stir in beaten egg yolks, sugar, and lemon rind.

  5. Cook in a double boiler for 10 minutes.

  6. Transfer mixture to a pudding dish.

Top and brown

  1. Beat egg whites until light.

  2. Add powdered sugar and lemon juice to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread egg white mixture on pudding.

  4. Brown the topping.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 that thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich its texture as they set with gentle heat.
Egg whites
Whipped into a light foam that forms the topping and sets when browned.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess as the rice absorbs it and thickens.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it stay smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Cook the custard gently in the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken only at moderate heat. Too much heat can scramble them into a grainy texture, so gentle, steady cooking keeps the pudding smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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