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 Shape
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the rice
Cook the rice slowly in the milk with the lemon rind for flavor until tender.
Remove from heat and stir in the sugar and beaten egg.
Bake
Butter a plain mold well and pour in the mixture.
Cover with buttered paper and bake or steam for 40 minutes until firm.
Serve
Turn out and pour custard sauce around and over.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides the bulk and body, and its starch thickens the milk as it cooks.
- Milk
- Forms the creamy liquid that the rice cooks and softens in.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and rice.
- Egg
- Sets when heated, binding the pudding so it holds firm when turned out.
- Lemon rind
- Adds a fresh citrus aroma to the milk while the rice cooks.
The step that matters
Baking or steaming until firm. Egg proteins set as they heat. Too much heat or too long a cook makes the pudding rubbery or grainy, so it should be firm but still tender when tested.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, egg, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, egg, butter. 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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