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Dessert

Whole Rice Pudding Without Eggs

A baked rice pudding made with rice, brown sugar, butter, and milk, cooked until soft and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Whole Rice Pudding Without Eggs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Weigh 6 ounces of rice, 6 ounces of brown sugar, and 3.5 ounces of fresh butter.

  3. Break the butter into small bits and wash the rice in several waters.

  4. Combine the rice, sugar, and butter in a pudding dish.

  5. Fill the dish with good milk and let it soak for several hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven for nearly 2 hours.

  2. As the milk evaporates, add more milk until the rice is swollen and soft.

  3. Allow the pudding to brown before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and swells as it soaks and bakes into a soft texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like flavor and helps the top brown.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that turns the mixture creamy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding more milk as it evaporates. Rice keeps absorbing liquid during a long bake. If the milk runs low before the rice is swollen and soft, the pudding will be dry and grainy, so top it up as needed.

“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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