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Dessert

A Common Rice Pudding

A simple rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, eggs, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk 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 ↓

A Common Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Cook the rice

  1. Rinse the rice in cold water and boil it gently for 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice in a sieve or strainer.

  3. In a clean saucepan, combine the drained rice and milk, and let it stew until tender.

Make the custard

  1. Sweeten the mixture with sugar.

  2. Gradually stir in the beaten and strained eggs.

  3. Add grated nutmeg, lemon rind, or cinnamon for flavor.

Bake

  1. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens into the pudding body as it stews in milk, giving it its thick, creamy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give the baked surface a light browning.
Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken and set the milk mixture into a firm, custard-like pudding when baked.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Eggs added to hot milk can scramble into lumps if added too quickly. Adding them gradually, after straining, keeps the custard smooth as it thickens in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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