Skip to main content
Dessert

Imperial Pudding

A gelatin‑set rice pudding flavored with mace or vanilla, sweetened with sugar, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Imperial Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in ¼ cup of cold water.

  2. Boil the rice in 1 pint of cold water until hot, then drain all the water.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the milk to the rice and cook in a double boiler for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in the soaked gelatin, sugar, salt, and flavoring.

  3. Fold in 1 cup of whipped cream or serve with custard made from ½ cup sugar, 1 pint milk, and 2 eggs.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks slowly, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid and creamy richness that the rice softens and absorbs.
Gelatin
Sets the pudding so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, creamy base.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness from trapped air and richness from its fat.
Mace or vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring in the soaked gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved into the warm mixture before it cools. If it is stirred in unevenly or the mixture is too cool, it can form lumps or set unevenly, so the pudding loses its smooth texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes