Name: Rice Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup cooked rice; ½ cup butter; ½ cup sugar; 3 large eggs; 1 teaspoon lemon zest; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; ¼ cup bread crumbs; ½ cup raisins or currants; ½ cup sweet or sour cream or melted butter

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 ↓

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the beaten eggs, lemon zest, cinnamon, bread crumbs, and raisins or currants.
Mix in the cooked rice and sweet or sour cream or melted butter.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for about 1 hour.

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.

Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and tenderness to the pudding.
Sugar: Creams with the butter and adds sweetness.
Cooked rice: Forms the body of the pudding.
Bread crumbs: Helps absorb liquid and give the pudding a firmer texture.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits about as well
Lemonthe original

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