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Dessert

Rich Ground-rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, and flavored with ratafia and orange‑flower or rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rich Ground-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.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, stir together the ground rice and milk until it boils.

  2. Add the melted butter, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel; mix well.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg yolks, egg white, ratafia, and orange‑flower or rose water.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Before serving, sprinkle grated loaf sugar on top.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg white
Adds structure and lightness to the baked set.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown on the surface.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks into a creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling first lets the eggs blend smoothly so the custard sets evenly in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, 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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