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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked dessert made with rice, milk, egg, sugar, allspice, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,083 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Swell the rice by soaking it in water until it expands.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the swollen rice, milk, egg, sugar, allspice, and lemon peel.

  2. Pour the mixture into a deep baking dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set and lightly browned.

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. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides body and bulk, as its starch absorbs liquid and softens during baking.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that makes the pudding moist and creamy.
Egg
Sets as it heats, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat. Too much heat or too long in the oven makes the custard curdle and turn dry or rubbery, so check for a just-set centre rather than baking until firm throughout.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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