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Dessert

A Good Frencii Rice Pudding, or Gateau De Riz

A creamy rice pudding made with milk, cream, butter, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and sea salt, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

A Good Frencii Rice Pudding, or Gateau De Riz

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice base

  1. Swell the rice in the milk (or milk and cream) until tender.

  2. Add butter, sugar, salt, and lemon rind, and simmer until the rice is fully swollen.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolks gradually.

Prepare the pan

  1. Coat a small baking pan with clarified butter.

  2. Sprinkle the pan with fine bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold the stiff egg whites into the rice mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan without disturbing the crumbs.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour until firm and browned.

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. Milk + ricetop 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells in the milk to give the pudding its body and tender bite.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy base of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the base; whites, whisked and folded in, lighten and help it set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Whites must be whisked stiff and folded gently so air is kept in the mixture; deflating them makes the pudding dense rather than light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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