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Dessert

White Pudding in Skins

A sweet pudding made from rice, almonds, currants, lard, eggs, sugar, and spices, boiled in skins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

White Pudding in Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in warm water.

  2. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

  3. Drain the rice in a sieve.

Prepare the flavourings

  1. Beat the almonds very fine with rosewater.

  2. Wash the currants and dry the currants.

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

  4. Beat the eggs, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, and salt together.

Fill and cook

  1. Mix the rice with the almond mixture and the beaten ingredients.

  2. Put the mixture into skins.

  3. 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the filling and sets into a soft, tender body when cooked in milk.
Milk
Cooks the rice to tenderness and gives the filling its creamy moisture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm as it cooks.
Sweet almonds
Add richness and a nutty body to the filling when beaten fine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.
Hog's lard
Adds fat, giving the filling richness and a softer texture.

The step that matters

Put the mixture into skins. The skins must be filled without overstuffing, since the filling expands and can burst the skin when boiled. Well-sealed skins keep the rice mixture contained during cooking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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