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Dessert

Rice-pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, lemon peel, butter, eggs, sugar, spices, and optional currants, baked in a pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice well in several waters and pick it over.

  2. Boil the rice slowly in a little water for a few minutes, then pour off the water.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the milk and lemon peel to the rice, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

  2. When the rice is soft, pour it into a dish and mix in the butter or suet.

  3. Once cooled, add the beaten eggs, sugar, and seasoning.

  4. Optionally, add currants.

Bake

  1. Cover the edges of a flat pie dish with pastry cut into leaves and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake the pudding until set.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that softens as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and, with the eggs, forms the creamy custard base.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding and giving it structure.
Butter or suet
Fat that adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice while it cooks in the milk. Rice starch settles and scorches on the base of the pan when unstirred, so constant stirring prevents sticking and burning.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lemon, butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, lemon, butter, egg, sugar, cinnamon. 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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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