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Dessert

Rice Puddings

A sweet dish made from ground rice, eggs, cream, milk, butter, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Rice Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the ground rice until soft.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Mix the beaten yolks with cream, sugar, and butter.

  4. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

  5. Boil or bake the mixture.

Cook the rice

  1. Combine rice, milk, and cinnamon in a saucepan and stir often.

  2. Once thick, add butter.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

  4. Grate nutmeg.

  5. Stir in rose water.

  6. Let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat 8 eggs.

  2. Mix in half the whites.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish.

  4. Bake in the oven until set.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens as it cooks and gives the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a soft, firm texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, velvety texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the rice cooks in, becoming thick and creamy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the dairy and eggs.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding is done when it is just firm. Overbaking makes the eggs tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy, watery texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, cream, sugar, butter, nutmeg, rose. 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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