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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet dish made from rice, milk, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and bitter almond essence, served with fruit compote or apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, pick, and drain the rice.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  3. Add enough essence of bitter almonds to flavor the milk.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the rice to the milk and let it swell gradually over low heat until tender.

  2. Stir in the sugar, butter, and egg yolks.

Mold and serve

  1. Butter a mold and press the rice mixture into it.

  2. Fill the mold with your choice of fruit compote or melted apricot jam before serving.

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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells gradually in the milk and sets the pudding's body as it becomes tender.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set firm and creamy when cooked.
Milk
Cooks the rice and forms the creamy base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the milk and yolks.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the rice to the milk over low heat. Gentle heat lets the rice swell gradually and cook evenly without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Rushing with high heat can burn the milk and leave the grains unevenly tender.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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