Skip to main content
Dessert

A Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with rice flour, milk, butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, lemon rind, and eggs, served with melted butter and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine rice flour and milk over medium heat, stirring constantly to prevent clumping or burning.

  2. Once thickened, remove from heat and pour into an earthenware pan.

Finish the mixture

  1. Stir in softened butter and cream or milk until smooth.

  2. Add sugar, grated nutmeg, and lemon rind; mix well.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites together, then incorporate into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into small china basins or wooden bowls and boil until set.

Serve

  1. Serve by turning out onto a dish, drizzling with melted butter and a little sherry, and sprinkling with sugar.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk into a starchy base that sets the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when heated.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help give the set pudding structure.
Milk
Hydrates the rice flour so it can thicken into a smooth base.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, making the texture more tender and creamy.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour and milk constantly. Rice flour starch can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred over heat. Constant stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so it thickens smoothly as it gelatinizes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, milk, butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes