Name: Baked Rice Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked rice; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup breadcrumbs; meat, fish, or vegetables (prepared as ragout, salpicon, or farce); curry powder (to taste); slices of bacon (optional); salt (to taste)

Why it works: Rice and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,481 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

2 cups cooked rice
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup breadcrumbs
meat, fish, or vegetables (prepared as ragout, salpicon, or farce)
curry powder (to taste)
slices of bacon (optional)
salt (to taste)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mold

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Butter a mold and sprinkle it with breadcrumbs.
Mold the cooked rice around the inside of the mold.

Fill and bake

Fill the center with prepared meat, fish, or vegetables.
Season with curry powder and top with butter or bacon slices.
Cover with remaining rice and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

If desired, turn out onto a plate and cut a small hole in the top to add sauce.

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.

Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice: Forms the outer shell and holds the filling in its shape.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the top brown while baking.
Breadcrumbs: Coat the mold so the rice releases cleanly and the outside crisps slightly.
Curry powder: Adds aroma and warm spiced flavour to the filling.

“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.