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Meringue Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding topped with meringue and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meringue Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in water until cooked and dry.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the grated rind of the lemon.

  3. Mix the yolks with the rice, then add the milk and butter.

  4. Butter a pie dish and pour in the mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly set.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gradually add the sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding, then add a layer of jam.

  4. Bake until the meringue is light brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked and dried first, it forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard base while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness, softening the rice and setting into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Lemon
Rind adds aroma to the base, and juice adds acidity that brightens the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be fully whipped before the sugar is added gradually; under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold their shape and the meringue may weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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