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Dessert

Rice Custard

A baked custard made with boiled rice, milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Rice Custard

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the boiled rice, milk, beaten egg, sugar, nutmeg, and raisins.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  4. Place the pudding dish in a larger pan filled with hot water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve hot or 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. Rice + milktop 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

Egg
Sets the milk mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as it heats.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy texture that the rice soaks up.
Boiled rice
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs liquid as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to gentle browning on the surface.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness distributed through the custard.

The step that matters

Placing the pudding dish in a pan of hot water. The water bath surrounds the custard with gentle, even heat. Egg proteins set smoothly this way, while direct high heat can overcook the edges and leave the centre curdled or watery.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

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