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Dessert

Virginian Rum Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, rice, vermicelli, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, raisins, candied peel, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Virginian Rum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Blanch the rice, then combine it with the milk in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer with the vermicelli for about 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Melt the butter and stir it into the cooled mixture along with the egg yolks and sugar.

  2. Fold in the egg whites, cinnamon, ginger, raisins, candied peel, and rum.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + ricetop 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

Rice
Starch that thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites add lightness when folded in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the custard sets from.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the butter and eggs.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while intact, so folding them gently keeps the pudding light. Stirring hard deflates the foam and makes the texture dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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