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Dessert

Good Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked with a pastry border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Good Ground Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the custard base

  1. Mix the ground rice with ½ pint of milk until smooth.

  2. Pour this mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk, stirring constantly over gentle heat for 10 to 12 minutes.

  3. Add the butter, sugar, and salt, stirring until combined.

  4. Remove from heat and stir for a few minutes to prevent hardening.

  5. Quickly mix in the egg yolks, egg whites, lemon rind, and brandy.

Prepare and bake

  1. Prepare a buttered dish with a border of pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding into the dish and drizzle with clarified butter.

  3. Moisten the pastry with cold water.

  4. Dust the pastry with sugar, using less on the pudding.

  5. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens and the eggs enrich.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, tender texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the set pudding.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the dusted top in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the rice mixture constantly while it cooks. Ground rice thickens as its starch gelatinises in hot liquid. Stirring over gentle heat keeps the starch dispersed and prevents lumps or scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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