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Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, lemon rind, almonds, eggs, butter, and optional candied orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot and heat slowly, stirring occasionally until the rice is soft and thick.

  2. Sweeten with sugar while still hot.

  3. Stir in the lemon rind, pounded almonds, and whisked eggs.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour it into a well-buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  2. Cover with a buttered paper and a floured cloth.

  3. Boil for exactly 1 hour.

  4. Allow to stand for 2 to 3 minutes before turning out.

  5. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or a compote of fresh fruit.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Rice + milktop 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

Whole rice
Cooks down with the milk to form the thick, soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when boiled, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to its tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps prevent the pudding from sticking to the mold.

The step that matters

Filling the basin completely before boiling. Air pockets left in the mold can let the pudding collapse or form uneven texture as it sets. Covering tightly with buttered paper and floured cloth keeps water out and lets the pudding steam evenly.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, lemon, almond, egg, butter):

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

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