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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet, baked rice pudding with butter, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, raisins, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until thick, then let it cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter.

  2. Add powdered sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and egg yolks one at a time.

  3. Stir in the raisins and the cooled rice.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Add pounded almonds if desired.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Or boil for 2 hours, keeping the water boiling steadily.

  3. Serve with a pudding sauce, either wine or brandy.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding as it thickens in milk.
Milk
Cooks the rice into a soft, creamy base and carries the flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, giving the pudding a lighter, risen texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten egg whites hold air that lifts the pudding. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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