Why it works: Rice and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,611 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Rice and Gooseberry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Spread the rice evenly over a moist, well-floured pudding cloth.
Place the green gooseberries on top, after removing the heads and stalks.
Gather the cloth around the fruit, leaving room for the rice to swell.
Cook and serve
Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Serve with a very sweet sauce or plenty of sugar.
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 + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,611 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Swells during boiling to form the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
- Green gooseberries
- Provide tart acidity that balances the sweetness added at serving.
The step that matters
Leave room for the rice to swell. Rice absorbs water and expands as it cooks in the cloth. If the cloth is gathered too tightly around the rice and fruit, the pudding can burst or cook unevenly. Leaving slack lets the grains swell freely while the cloth holds the shape.
“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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