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Dessert

Another White Pudding in Skins

A sweet pudding made of rice, milk, almonds, currants, and spices, encased in skins and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Another White Pudding in Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash the rice in warm water.

  2. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

  3. Drain the rice in a sieve.

  4. Beat the almonds very finely with rose water.

  5. Wash and dry the currants.

  6. Cut the hog's lard into small pieces.

  7. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Add sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, and salt to the egg mixture.

  2. Combine the rice, almond mixture, and egg mixture.

  3. Fill the skins with the mixture and boil them.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk until tender, it gives the pudding a soft, bulky body.
Sweet almonds
Beaten fine, they add richness and a nutty flavor to the filling.
Eggs
Beaten and mixed in, they help bind the filling and set it when cooked.
Hog's lard
Cut into small pieces, it adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich.
Currants
Washed and dried, they add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit flavor.
Milk
Cooks the rice until tender and adds moisture and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Fill the skins and boil them. Overfilling the skins can cause them to burst during boiling, since the filling expands as it heats. Leave some room for expansion and keep the water at a gentle simmer so the skins cook without splitting.

Swap the currant

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

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

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