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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked or boiled pudding made from ground rice, milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. In a saucepan, gradually stir 1½ pints of milk into 4 ounces of ground rice.

  2. Add a piece of lemon peel and a little cinnamon.

  3. Heat until it boils, stirring constantly.

  4. Beat the mixture to a smooth batter.

  5. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  6. Remove the lemon peel and cinnamon.

Finish and bake

  1. Beat 3 eggs in a plate.

  2. Stir the eggs into the pudding along with 2 ounces of sugar and 2 teaspoons of nutmeg.

  3. Mix well.

  4. Line a dish with puff pastry or butter it.

  5. Bake for 30 minutes.

  6. If boiling, use a well‑buttered mold and cook for 1 hour.

  7. Optionally, add 3 ounces of currants.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a starchy batter that sets as the pudding cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice swells in and cooks into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set firm when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk and spices.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice batter. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells and gelatinises in hot liquid. Stirring constantly while it boils prevents scorching on the base, and gentle simmering lets the grains fully swell for a smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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