Skip to main content
Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, lemon rind, almonds, eggs, and optional candied orange rind and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice custard

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot and bring to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally until the rice is soft and thick.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with sugar while it is still hot, then stir in the grated lemon rind, pounded almonds, and whisked eggs.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then pour it into a well-buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

Boil and serve

  1. Cover the basin with a buttered paper and a floured cloth, then boil the pudding for exactly 1 hour.

  2. Allow it to stand for 2 to 3 minutes before turning it out onto a plate.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or a compote of fresh fruit.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Softens in the milk and thickens into the body of the pudding.
New milk
Cooks with the rice to form a soft, creamy base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.
Eggs
Set during boiling to bind the pudding and give it structure.
Pounded bitter almonds
Add a nutty, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Filling the basin completely before boiling. Eggs and rice set as the pudding cooks, and any air gap or underfilling can leave an uneven, hollow or misshapen result when turned out. Buttering the basin well helps the pudding release cleanly.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, lemon, almond, egg, butter):

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

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes