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Dessert

Cream Pudding

A baked rice cream pudding flavored with cinnamon and lemon peel, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream Pudding

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream 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.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar, then the boiled rice.

  4. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  5. Add the cinnamon and lemon peel, then pour into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Spread a stiff meringue made from the egg whites and a little sugar on top.

  3. Bake until the meringue is lightly colored.

Chill

  1. Cool and refrigerate until serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and the whites form the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the milk mixture so the pudding holds its shape when set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives the pudding its creamy body.
Rice
Adds bulk and a soft, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture begins to thicken. Egg yolks and starch thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle the eggs or leave the starch grainy. Stirring steadily and watching for the first thickening keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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