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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, lemon rind, sugar, and egg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Ground 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 base

  1. Boil the milk, lemon rind, and butter together.

  2. Strain the mixture over the ground rice, which has been smoothly mixed with cold milk. Add salt.

  3. Return to the pan and stir over gentle heat.

  4. Cook until it leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  5. Remove from heat and add sugar.

Finish and bake

  1. When slightly cooled, mix in the yolk of the egg and the stiffly whisked egg white.

  2. Turn into a well-greased pie dish.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and creamy structure.
Egg
The yolk enriches and sets the custard, while the whisked white adds lightness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in, providing moisture and creaminess.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its soft, tender texture.

The step that matters

Cook until it leaves the sides of the pan clean. The rice starch must be fully cooked and thickened before baking. Undercooked starch stays thin and grainy, and overcooking can scorch the milk on the pan base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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