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Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from boiled rice, milk, sugar, lemon rind, almonds, and eggs, served with sauce or compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot; heat slowly until it simmers, then cook until the rice is soft and thick.

  2. Stir in the sugar, lemon rind, and pounded almonds while the mixture is still hot.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the whisked eggs and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  2. Cover with a buttered paper and a floured cloth, then boil for exactly 1 hour.

  3. Let it stand for 2 to 3 minutes before turning it out.

  4. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or a compote of fresh fruit.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Cooks down into a soft, thick body that gives the pudding its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid the rice cooks in, becoming the creamy base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender, softer texture.
Eggs
Set during boiling to bind the pudding and give it a firm, sliceable structure.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs after cooling. Eggs scramble and curdle if added to very hot mixture, which would leave a grainy texture. Letting the mixture cool first lets the eggs blend smoothly before the pudding sets during boiling.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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

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