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Dessert

Lemon Rice Pudding

A baked lemon-flavored rice pudding made with milk, sugar, egg, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Rice Pudding

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 ↓

Lemon 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.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Boil the rice in the milk until soft.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in the sugar, egg, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a buttered dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the surface is lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Pour lemon juice on top before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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
Softens in the milk and gives the pudding its body and starchy structure.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the rice absorbs and cooks in.
Egg
Helps the pudding set and hold together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Lemon rind
Adds bright lemon aroma and flavour from the peel's oils.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice in the milk until soft. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of the pan, so gentle heat and stirring are needed. The rice starch must fully swell and soften here, because it will not finish cooking properly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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