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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding flavored with molasses, cinnamon, raisins, and apples, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare cream rice pudding, substituting molasses for sugar.

  2. Season with cinnamon.

  3. Stir in raisins and quartered sour apples if desired.

  4. Bake until set and serve with cream.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 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

Molasses
Replaces sugar, adding sweetness, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they plump in the pudding.
Sour apples
Add tartness that balances the sweet molasses, and moisture that softens during baking.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that complements the molasses and apples.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The pudding firms as it bakes and cools. Stopping too early leaves it loose and runny, while overbaking can make it dry and stiff, so check for a set centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cinnamon, raisin, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cinnamon, raisin, cream. 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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