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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg, optionally enriched with butter, brandy, and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Heat 1 quart of new milk in a saucepan until it boils, adding your choice of flavoring.

  2. Stir in ¼ pound of ground rice that has been wetted with a little cold milk.

  3. Continue stirring until the mixture boils and thickens.

  4. Remove the flavorings and let the mixture cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Once cool, add 6 beaten eggs, 6 ounces of sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. For a richer pudding, mix in 2 additional eggs, ¼ pound of butter, ½ cup of brandy, and a few bitter almonds or ratafia.

  3. For added texture, create a crust around the edge or lay a thin rich paste over the dish before pouring in the pudding.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens into a pudding.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the custard texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, softer texture in the optional richer version.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with ground rice. Ground rice must be wetted with cold milk first so it disperses without lumps, then the mixture must keep boiling while stirred so the starch thickens evenly and does not scorch on the pan bottom.

“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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