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Dessert

A Boiled Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with rice flour, milk, butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, lemon rind, and eggs, boiled until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine rice flour and milk in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent clumping or burning.

  2. Once thickened, remove from heat and pour into an earthenware pan.

  3. Stir in softened butter, cream (or milk), sugar, grated nutmeg, and lemon rind until smooth.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together, then mix into the rice mixture until well combined.

  5. Pour the mixture into small china basins or wooden bowls and boil until set.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish, drizzling melted butter and a splash of sack (sherry) over the top, then sprinkle with sugar.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set base as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when heated.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift, helping the pudding hold its set texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice flour thickens into a pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while thickening the rice flour and milk. Starch granules swell and can clump or stick to the base of the pan over medium heat. Constant stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents scorching.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, milk, butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg. 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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