Skip to main content
Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made from ground rice, milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. In a saucepan, gradually stir 4 ounces of ground rice into 1½ pints of milk.

  2. Add a piece of lemon peel and a pinch of cinnamon.

  3. Heat while stirring until it boils.

  4. Beat the mixture to a smooth batter.

  5. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. Beat 3 eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir the eggs into the pudding along with 2 ounces of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg.

  3. Remove the lemon peel and cinnamon.

  4. Mix well.

  5. Line a dish with puff pastry or butter it well.

  6. Bake for 30 minutes.

  7. If boiling, use a well‑buttered mold and cook for 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a set, creamy pudding body as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the rice absorbs and cooks in.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice gently. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells in hot milk. Boiling hard or stirring too little can scorch the bottom or leave lumps, so keep the heat low and stir steadily during the 15 minutes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes