Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Plain Rice Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Wash the rice thoroughly.
Bake
Place the rice in a pie dish and add 1 pint of new milk.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes.
If a moist pudding is desired, add ½ pint more milk before baking.
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.
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Its starch absorbs the milk and swells, forming the thick body of the pudding.
- New milk
- Supplies the liquid the rice absorbs, and its proteins and sugars set and brown into a creamy texture.
- Additional milk
- Adds extra liquid so the finished pudding stays moister.
The step that matters
Baking the pudding. The rice must absorb the milk while the starch swells and the liquid sets into a creamy body. Baking too long at high heat can dry the pudding out before the rice is fully tender.
“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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