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Dessert

A Good Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Good Ground Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix 5 ounces of ground rice with ½ cup of milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the ground rice mixture into 1½ pints of boiling milk.

  3. Stir constantly for 10 to 12 minutes over gentle heat.

  4. Add ¼ pound of butter, 5 to 6 ounces of powdered sugar, and ¼ teaspoon of salt before removing from heat.

  5. Stir for a few minutes to prevent hardening on top.

  6. Quickly mix in the yolks of 8 eggs, 2 egg whites, the grated rind of 1 lemon, and ⅓ cup of brandy.

Prepare and bake

  1. Prepare a buttered dish with a border of pastry.

  2. Moisten the pastry with cold water.

  3. Pour the pudding into the dish.

  4. Drizzle clarified butter over the pudding.

  5. Dust the pastry with sugar, using less on the pudding itself.

  6. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 smooth, sliceable custard-like pudding base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set into a tender, custardy texture.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help give the baked pudding structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the surface as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens and bakes into pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice mixture over heat. Ground rice settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, and the surface can harden if left unattended. Constant stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the pudding cooks smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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