Skip to main content
Dessert

Carolina Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon peel, and egg yolks, served with butter and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Carolina Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly and place it in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. Stir continuously until the mixture becomes very thick, being careful not to let it burn.

  3. Transfer the thickened rice mixture to a pan and grate nutmeg into it.

  4. Add the ground cinnamon, lemon peel, and egg yolks, then mix well.

  5. Sweeten to your taste.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture tightly in a cloth and place it in boiling water.

  2. Ensure the water remains boiling for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Serve with melted butter poured over it and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Add a little wine to the sauce for extra flavor, if desired.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs and cooks in, creating the creamy base.
Egg yolks
Proteins that set during cooking, helping the pudding firm up and turn rich.
Ground cinnamon
Warm aromatic spice that flavors the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice mixture while it thickens. Rice starch and milk sugars settle on the bottom of the pan and scorch easily once the mixture thickens. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes