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Dessert

A Nice Rice Pudding for Children

A simple rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, bay leaf, and butter, baked until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

A Nice Rice Pudding for Children

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in fresh milk until tender.

  2. Sweeten with white sugar and add cinnamon, lemon peel, and bay leaf.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the rice mixture to a deep dish.

  2. Melt the butter in a little milk and pour over the rice.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until brown.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooks into tender grains that thicken the milk into a creamy pudding.
Fresh milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy body of the pudding.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until brown. A low, slow oven lets the milk and sugar set gently without curdling or drying out, while the surface slowly browns. Watching the colour matters, since the top can scorch if the oven runs hot.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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