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Rice Meringue

A baked rice pudding topped with a lightly browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water until soft.

  2. Drain and cool the rice.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the milk, beaten egg yolks, sugar, and nutmeg or flavoring to the rice.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Let it cool completely.

Add the meringue and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar and flavoring to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Lightly brown the meringue in the oven.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it bakes, giving body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the egg yolks into a soft, creamy custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture as they set, giving the pudding its richness and structure.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and becomes stiff and airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Meringue can go from golden to scorched quickly. Watch it closely, since browning happens fast at the top of the oven and over-baked meringue turns bitter and can weep.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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