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Dessert

Italian Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made from rice, suet, raisins, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,265 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Italian Rice Pudding

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

  1. Wash and boil the rice until tender, then drain it.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix the rice with the beef suet, sultana raisins, caster sugar, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Beef + raisintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,273 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding, absorbing the liquid and setting into a soft, tender mass.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during baking, while adding richness.
Sultana raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Egg yolks set as they heat, so the pudding must be baked until firm but not overcooked, or it becomes dry and rubbery. Browning comes from sugar caramelising at the surface.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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