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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A creamy dessert made by cooking rice in milk, eggs, sugar, and butter, then baked and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Soak the rice in hot water, then drain.

Make the pudding

  1. Steam the rice in the milk until soft.

  2. Add butter, sweet cream, and beaten egg yolks mixed with sugar. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour into a well-buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C).

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites, sweeten, and flavor.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding.

  3. Bake until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold with fruit sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it steams in milk, forming the body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that bakes into a light, airy topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the topping brown.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding. Egg whites hold their foam only while whipped and can deflate or weep if left standing too long before baking. Spreading them promptly and baking until light brown keeps the topping light and sets it firmly.

“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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