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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from milk, rice, egg, raisins, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice well and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the milk over the rice and simmer for 20 minutes on low heat.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg and sugar together.

  4. After 20 minutes, add the egg mixture to the rice and stir well.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a basin or mold with dripping and place the raisins inside.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the basin and cover with paper.

  3. Place the basin in a saucepan and add boiling water halfway up the sides.

  4. Boil the water for 1 hour.

  5. Turn the pudding out onto a very hot dish.

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

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

  2. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it simmers and softens in the milk.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create the creamy, moist base of the pudding.
Egg
Helps bind the pudding and sets it as it cooks, giving it structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and egg.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture after simmering. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the egg to hot rice without stirring well can cause uneven or lumpy texture. Stirring thoroughly and waiting until the rice has simmered helps the egg blend in smoothly and set evenly.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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