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Dessert

Plain Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made from pearl rice, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, suet, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Plain Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the pearl rice, Sultana raisins, sugar, ground cinnamon, chopped suet, and sweet milk in the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl rice
Its starch thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that sets as its proteins and starch cook.
Chopped suet
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps soften the texture of the rice.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking until set. As the pudding heats, the milk proteins and rice starch set and thicken. Underbaked, it stays runny and watery; overbaked, the milk can dry out and turn tough.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

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