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Dessert

Very Good Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, water, cream, butter, currants, egg yolks, lemon zest, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Very Good Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Put rice in a pot with water and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice and return it to the pot with cream and salt.

  3. Add lemon zest, sugar, and butter to the rice.

  4. Stir in currants and beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with sifted sugar and 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.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding as it softens and absorbs the cream.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a soft, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks set into the custard during baking; if the rice mixture is too hot when they go in, they can scramble, so add them to a cooled mixture and stir well to keep the texture smooth.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cream, lemon, sugar, butter, egg. 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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