Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Rice Shape
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and drain the rice.
Make the pudding
In a pan, combine the rice, milk, and 2 ounces of butter; allow it to swell.
Once cold, mix in the egg yolks, 4 ounces of butter, salt, raisins, cream, and sifted sugar.
Transfer the mixture into a shape and boil it.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together565 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 as it swells and softens in the milk.
- Milk
- Cooks the rice and provides the liquid that makes the pudding creamy.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help the pudding set as it cooks.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, soft texture.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a silkier texture to the pudding.
- Raisins
- Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Transfer the mixture into a shape and boil it.. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture must be cooked gently enough to firm without curdling or turning grainy. Heating too hard can scramble the eggs and spoil the texture.
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, egg, cream, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, cream, 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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