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Dessert

Rice Puddings, Miniature

Miniature rice pudding baked in small cups with butter, eggs, and flavored with lemon peel, almonds, or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rice Puddings, Miniature

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.

Make the rice base

  1. Soak the rice in 2 cups of milk over low heat with a strip of lemon peel until swollen.

  2. Stir in the butter and the remaining 1 cup of milk, then let the mixture cool.

  3. Add the well-beaten eggs and a few drops of almond or vanilla essence.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter small cups or molds and line them with thin slices of candied peel.

  2. Fill the cups three-quarters full and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out the puddings onto a serving dish and serve with sweet 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. 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells as it absorbs milk, giving the puddings their body and tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and moistens the finished pudding.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the rice into a firm, sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs scramble when added to very hot liquid, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard. Cooling the rice mixture first lets the beaten eggs blend in evenly and set uniformly when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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