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Dessert

Buffalo Bill Pudding

A sweet rice and flour pudding baked with milk, egg, butter or lard, and topped with preserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Buffalo Bill 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix together the ground rice, flour, sugar, milk, egg, butter or lard, and baking powder until well combined.

  2. Divide the mixture between two plates and bake until cooked through.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cooked, spread the preserve on one plate and gently press the other plate on top.

  2. Serve and enjoy.

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

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Provides a tender, slightly grainy body to the cake-like pudding.
Flour
Gives structure so the batter holds together when baked.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps set it as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Baking until cooked through. Baking too briefly leaves the centre wet and doughy, because the egg and starches must set fully. Baking too long dries the crumb, so check for a set centre rather than relying on time alone.

“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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