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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made with ground rice, milk, lemon rind, cinnamon, laurel leaves, sugar, butter, eggs, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and laurel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 691 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Ground 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.

Make the rice base

  1. Heat the milk gently with lemon rind, cinnamon, and laurel leaves until flavored.

  2. Remove the flavoring ingredients and bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Mix the ground rice with a little cold milk until smooth, then add to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir until thick, then transfer the rice mixture to a bowl and let it cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Once cooled, mix in sugar, butter, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add brandy for flavor if desired.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish and bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C).

  4. If the oven is too hot, the pudding will be watery.

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. Cinnamon + laureltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together691 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens and the eggs set into.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and spices.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Keep the oven gentle. Eggs set through gentle heat. If the oven is too hot, the egg proteins tighten quickly and squeeze out liquid, so the pudding turns watery instead of creamy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, laurel, rice, sugar, butter, 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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