Why it works: Rice and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,744 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Rice and Gooseberry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Spread the rice evenly over a moist, well-floured pudding cloth.
Place the green gooseberries on top, after removing the heads and stalks.
Gather the cloth around the fruit, leaving room for the rice to swell.
Cook and serve
Boil the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Serve with a very sweet sauce or plenty of sugar.
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.
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Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,744 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
- Rice
- Swells as it absorbs liquid, forming the soft body of the pudding.
- Green gooseberries
- Tart fruit that adds acidity and releases juice into the rice as it cooks.
The step that matters
Leave room in the cloth for the rice to swell. Rice absorbs water and expands as it cooks. If the cloth is gathered too tightly around it, the pudding can burst or cook unevenly.
“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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