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Empress Pudding

A baked rice pudding with lemon rind, apricot jam, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Empress Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until soft. Add the butter and bring to a boil again.

  2. Grate the rind of half a lemon into 1 oz. of sugar, then mix the grated rind and sugar into the rice.

  3. Allow to cool slightly, then stir in the egg yolk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread a layer of apricot jam in a pie dish and fill with the rice mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually add 1 tablespoon of sugar, and pile on top of the pudding.

  3. Decorate with a few cherries and angelica.

  4. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for 10 minutes to set.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

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 + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  5. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked soft in milk, it forms the thick, tender body of the pudding.
Egg yolk
Enriches the rice base and helps it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they create the light, airy meringue topping that puffs and browns.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, smooth mouthfeel to the rice mixture.
Apricot jam
Forms a sweet, fruity layer beneath the rice that flavours the pudding as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and, dissolved into whipped whites, stabilises the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to firm peaks before sugar is added and the meringue piled on. Underwhipped whites stay runny and sink or weep, while the sugar added gradually helps keep the foam stable through baking.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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