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Dessert

Lentil and Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from lentils, rice, milk, sugar, and almond flavoring, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lentils and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lentil and Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Boil the rice and lentils in milk or water for 15 to 20 minutes until softened.

  2. Add sugar and almond flavoring.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and bake for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Lentils + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lentils + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and thickens the pudding, giving it body as it cooks in the liquid.
Split lentils
They soften and break down, adding thickness and a creamy, substantial texture.
Milk
Provides moisture and richness, and its milk sugars help the surface brown in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the baked surface.
Almond flavoring
Adds a distinct aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the rice and lentils until fully softened. Starch in rice and lentils only swells and thickens fully with enough heat and liquid. If the grains are still firm before baking, the pudding stays gritty and does not set into a smooth, cohesive texture.

Swap the lentils

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Lentilsthe original

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