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Dessert

Old Fashioned Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, rice, sugar, nutmeg, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Old Fashioned Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Combine the milk, rice, sugar, nutmeg, and raisins in a pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Place the dish in the oven and cook slowly for 2 hours, stirring down the crust occasionally.

  2. Allow a paper-like crust to form on top.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Rich milk
Forms the body of the pudding and, as it slowly reduces, the browned crust on top.
Rice
Thickens the liquid as it cooks slowly, giving the pudding a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during the long, slow bake.
Seeded raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring down the crust. A skin forms on top as the milk slowly evaporates and proteins set. Stirring it back in occasionally keeps the rice evenly distributed and the pudding creamy rather than dry or lumpy at the bottom.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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