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Dessert

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

A baked rice pudding made with rice, suet or butter, sugar, milk, and spices, without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

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. Wash the rice.

  2. Place half of the shred suet in a pie dish.

  3. Add the rice, sugar, and seasoning over the suet.

  4. Pour in the milk and top with the remaining shred suet.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about an hour.

  2. If the milk dries up too much, add a little more.

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 + milktop 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 + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Whole rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks slowly in the milk.
Skim milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and that gives the pudding its creamy moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during slow baking.
Shred suet, dripping, or butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture, and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Checking the milk level during baking. Rice keeps absorbing liquid as it bakes, so the milk can dry out before the rice is tender. Adding a little more milk keeps the pudding creamy rather than dry and stiff.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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

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