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Dessert

Rick Caudle

A sweet, spiced rice pudding made with brandy, lemon peel, cinnamon, and milk, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rick Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Mix grated rice with a little cold water and pour into the boiling water.

  3. Stir until it reaches a proper consistency.

  4. Add sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy.

  5. Boil until smooth.

Make the milk rice

  1. Soak Carolina rice in water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the soaked rice.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of soaked rice to the milk in a separate saucepan.

  4. Simmer until it can be pulped through a sieve.

  5. Combine the pulp and milk with a bruised clove and sugar.

  6. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  7. If too thick, add 1-2 tablespoons of milk.

Serve

  1. Serve with thin toast.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated rice
Thickens the water into a smooth, porridge-like base.
Carolina rice
Soaked and pulped, it gives body and thickness to the milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the pulped rice thickens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the lemon and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the thickened base.

The step that matters

Pulping the soaked Carolina rice. If the rice is not soaked long enough or simmered until fully softened, it will not pass smoothly through a sieve, leaving grainy texture in the finished caudle.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, milk, clove):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, milk, clove. 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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