Name: A Fine Boiled Rice-Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound rice flour; 1 pint milk; ¼ pound butter; ½ pint cream or milk; 8 egg yolks; 2 egg whites; sugar to taste; grated peel of 1 lemon

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 ↓

A Fine Boiled Rice-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

In a saucepan, combine rice flour and milk over medium heat.
Stir constantly until thickened to prevent sticking or burning.
Remove from heat and transfer to an earthen pan.
While hot, add butter and stir until melted.
Mix in cream or milk, egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, and lemon peel.

Boil and serve

Pour mixture into a basin or cups.
Boil them.
Serve with wine sauce poured over.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour: Thickens the milk into a starchy base that sets as the pudding cools.
Egg yolks: Add richness and help the pudding set into a creamy texture.
Egg whites: Add structure and lightness to the mixture as it cooks.
Butter: Adds fat for smoothness and rich flavor.
Milk: Provides the liquid that the rice flour thickens.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until thickened. Rice flour and milk can scorch or stick to the bottom of the pan over heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the starch dispersed, giving a smooth, thick base.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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

Lemon Rice Pudding19 recipes

Lemon Cake228 recipes

Lemon Ice147 recipes

Rice Cake120 recipes

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A Fine Boiled Rice-Pudding