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Dessert

Ground-Rice Pudding

A sweet, thickened milk pudding made with ground rice, rose water, lemon peel, butter, nutmeg, eggs, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Ground-Rice Pudding

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Ground-Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the ground rice, rose water, and lemon peel until thick.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Mix in the butter, nutmeg, egg yolks, and egg whites.

  5. Sweeten with brown sugar.

  6. Remove the lemon peel.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered basin.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Let it firm in a Dutch oven for 15 minutes without browning.

  4. Serve with a sauce made from melted butter, white wine, and brown 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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, starchy custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set firm when heated.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness as they set during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens.

The step that matters

Stir the rice until thick before removing from heat. Ground rice must be cooked long enough for its starch to gelatinize and thicken the milk. Removing it too early leaves a thin base that will not set properly during steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, rose, butter, nutmeg, 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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