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Dessert

Cold Rice Pudding

A chilled rice pudding made with Carolina rice, milk, egg yolks, sugar, gelatine, and cream, served with fruit or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cold Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the gelatine in a teacup of cold water.

  2. Wash and pick the rice, then place it in a saucepan with 1 pint of milk.

  3. Cover and gently boil until the rice absorbs all the milk, about 20 to 30 minutes without stirring.

  4. Add the sugar and transfer the rice to a basin to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the remaining ½ pint of milk in a small saucepan.

  2. Lightly mix the egg yolks in a bowl, then pour the boiling milk over them and mix thoroughly.

  3. Return the custard to the heat with the soaked gelatine, stirring until melted and thickened without boiling.

  4. Combine the custard with the cooled rice and mix well.

  5. Whip the cream and fold it into the mixture.

Mould and chill

  1. Decorate a border mold with cherries and angelica, then fill it with the rice mixture.

  2. Set on ice to chill completely.

  3. Turn out and fill the center with fruit puree or whipped cream, optionally colored with cochineal.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Cooked slowly in milk, it forms the body of the pudding and sets firm when cooled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook gently, giving the pudding a rich, smooth texture.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture as it cools, so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Cream
Whipped and folded in, it adds lightness and richness to the set pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens the set texture slightly.

The step that matters

Returning the custard to the heat. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but curdle and turn grainy if they boil, so the custard must be stirred over low heat only until it coats a spoon.

“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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