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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, water, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, salt, wine, raisins, currants, citron, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in water until tender.

Mix and bake

  1. While the rice is hot, add butter, sugar, beaten eggs, nutmeg, salt, wine, raisins, currants, citron, and cream.

  2. Mix well and pour into a buttered dish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding into a sliceable body as they cook.
Rice
Provides the starchy base that gives the pudding its body and soft texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the baked pudding a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Add the eggs while the rice is hot. Eggs set when heated, so adding them to hot rice helps them blend evenly into the mixture. Stirring them in thoroughly before baking keeps the custard smooth rather than streaked with cooked egg.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, wine, raisin. 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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