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Dessert

Whole Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, rice, eggs, spices, lemon peel, butter, and optional currants, edged with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Whole Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan and add the rice.

  2. Cook until soft, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs.

  2. Add nutmeg, cinnamon, grated lemon peel, butter, and sugar to the rice and milk mixture.

  3. If desired, mix in the washed currants.

  4. Place a rim of puff pastry around the edge of a baking dish, pour in the pudding mixture, and bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they heat, giving the pudding structure and a creamy body.
Rice
Softens in the hot milk and forms the bulk and body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create the creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavors of the milk, spices and lemon.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma from its oils without adding much liquid.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Eggs thicken as they heat, firming the custard. Underbaking leaves the pudding runny, while overbaking tightens the egg proteins too far, making the texture grainy and watery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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