Skip to main content
Dessert

Carolina Pudding

A sweet pudding made with rice, apples, sugar, butter, cloves, sherry, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Carolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Blanch and boil the rice in milk until soft and absorbed.

  2. Boil the cloves with the rice and remove them.

  3. Beat in the butter once the rice is cool.

Prepare the apples

  1. Bake the apples in their skins, then sieve the pulp.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine the apple pulp with the rice mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake.

  3. Serve with a sweet sauce.

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. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells and softens as it cooks in milk, giving the pudding its body and thickness.
Butter
Beaten into the cooled rice to add richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Apples
Their pulp adds moisture, sweetness and fruity flavour to the rice mixture.
Milk
Cooks the rice until tender and absorbed, forming the creamy base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Beat in the butter once the rice is cool. Butter added to very hot rice melts too quickly and can separate or turn greasy, so the mixture loses its smooth, even texture. Letting the rice cool first lets the fat blend evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes