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Dessert

Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding flavored with lemon peel, served with melted butter, raisin wine, and sprinkled with white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the rice.

  2. Add the lemon peel and tie the rice loosely in a cloth to allow room to swell.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the rice for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter and warmed raisin wine poured over it.

  3. Sift a little white sugar on top before serving.

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

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

  2. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it swells and softens during long boiling.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished pudding.
Raisin wine
Contributes fruity sweetness and aroma when warmed and poured over the pudding.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to finish the pudding at the table.

The step that matters

Tying the rice loosely in a cloth. Rice absorbs water and swells considerably as it cooks. A loose tie leaves room for expansion, so the grains are not squeezed and the cloth does not burst or tighten around the pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, lemon, butter, wine, sugar. 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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