Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Boiled Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rice
In a pot, combine milk and rice. Cook for 1 hour or more until rice is tender.
Make and boil the pudding
In a bowl, mix suet, sugar, candied peel, sultana raisins, and eggs.
Combine the rice mixture with the suet mixture and stir well.
Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold and boil for the required time.
Make the sauce and serve
Mix sherry, sugar, egg yolks, and a little lemon juice.
Heat gently until thickened.
Serve the pudding with the sauce poured over it.
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.
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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together565 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the sauce as it heats gently.
- Suet
- Adds richness and moisture to the pudding.
- Rice
- Softens into the body of the pudding as it cooks in milk.
The step that matters
Heat gently until thickened. Egg yolks in the sauce can curdle or scramble if heated too fast. Gentle heat lets the proteins thicken the sauce smoothly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry, sauce):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, sugar, raisin, egg, sherry, sauce. 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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