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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with ground rice, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and optional bay leaf or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle in the ground rice and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the sugar, butter, and eggs.

  4. If using bay leaf or vanilla pod, cook it in the milk; if using essence, add it just before baking.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake gently at 300°F (150°C) for about 1 hour.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the pudding body.
Eggs
They set during baking, firming the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Milk
It forms the liquid base that the rice softens in and the eggs set.
Butter
It adds fat, which gives the pudding a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
It adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Bake gently. High heat can curdle the egg proteins and make the pudding grainy or watery. A gentle oven lets the eggs set evenly into a smooth custard.

“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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