Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Ground Rice 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.
Cook the rice
Heat the milk in a saucepan.
Stir in the ground rice and cook for 15 minutes.
Let the mixture cool.
Mix and bake
Beat the eggs until light and mix them with the rice and milk.
Add the butter and lemon juice.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
-
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the eggs set into a creamy custard.
- Ground rice
- Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
- Eggs
- Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a tender, custard-like structure.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
The step that matters
Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Hot liquid can scramble beaten eggs on contact, leaving lumps. Cooling the rice mixture first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, egg, butter):
- Coconutfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Peachfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, egg, 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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