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Dessert

A Good French Rice Pudding, or Gateau De Riz

A custard-like dessert made with rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon rind, baked to a firm, browned top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Good French Rice Pudding, or Gateau De Riz

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice base

  1. Gently swell the rice in the milk (or milk and cream) in a pot until tender.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, salt, and lemon rind, and simmer until the rice is fully swollen.

  3. Remove from heat, let cool slightly, then stir in the beaten egg yolks gradually.

Prepare the pan

  1. Coat a small baking pan with clarified butter, then sprinkle it with stale bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold them into the rice mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan without disturbing the bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour until firm and browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells in the milk to form the thick, creamy body of the pudding.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken and enrich the custard, while whipped whites lighten and help it set.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped until stiff trap air that lightens the pudding; overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks the air out, leaving a dense result instead of a light, risen one.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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