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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding with butter, eggs, milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, and optional saffron and currants, rimmed with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice and milk

  1. Wash the rice in several waters.

  2. Boil the rice in 1 pint of milk.

  3. In another pot, boil ½ pint of milk with cinnamon and lemon peel for 15 minutes, then strain it.

  4. Add the strained milk to the rice and boil until nearly dry.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

Make the custard and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs (excluding 2 whites) and mix in sugar, nutmeg, and brandy.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the rice and pour into a buttered dish.

  3. Add puff pastry around the rim and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. For color, add saffron with the cinnamon and optional currants.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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, absorbing milk as it simmers into a thick, creamy base.
Milk
Cooks the rice and gives the pudding its creamy, moist texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the rice into a custard-like, sliceable pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until nearly dry. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and thickening after heat is removed, so stopping at the right point keeps the pudding creamy rather than stiff once it is mixed with eggs and baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cinnamon, butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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