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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, cream, milk, butter, eggs, almonds, brandy, spices, and optional saffron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

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 pudding

  1. Mix the ground rice with the cream until it forms a paste.

  2. Add the paste to the warm milk and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the butter, egg yolks, and egg white, and whip together.

  4. Flavor with pounded almonds, brandy, and spices.

  5. If desired, add saffron for color and flavor.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Almond + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

Ground rice
Provides the starchy body that thickens the pudding as it simmers and bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Egg white
Whipped into the mixture to add lightness and help the pudding rise and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in, adding creaminess and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice paste in the milk. Ground rice needs to be fully hydrated and cooked through while simmering, or the pudding will stay grainy and thin. Stirring keeps the starch from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the saffron

The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cream, milk, butter, egg, almond, brandy):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Saffronthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cream, milk, butter, egg, almond, brandy. 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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