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Dessert

Oxford Pudding

A simple rice pudding made with rice, water, butter, brown sugar, and treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oxford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice in four or five waters.

  2. Tie the rice into a pudding cloth, not too tightly.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the rice in a pot of cold water.

  2. Bring the pot to a boil.

  3. Let it boil for two hours.

  4. Serve with cold butter and sugar or treacle.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 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
Starch that absorbs water and softens into the body of the pudding as it boils.
Butter
Adds richness, melting into the hot pudding as it is served.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like flavor.
Treacle
Adds dark sweetness and a rich, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. Rice swells as it absorbs water and softens during boiling. A cloth tied too tightly restricts that swelling and may leave the pudding dense.

“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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