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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked or boiled pudding made from ground rice, milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ground Rice 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.

Make the pudding base

  1. In a saucepan, gradually stir 1½ cups of milk into 4 ounces of ground rice.

  2. Add the lemon peel and cinnamon, and heat while stirring until it boils.

  3. Beat the mixture to a smooth batter, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. In a bowl, beat 3 eggs and stir them into the pudding along with 2 ounces of sugar and 2 teaspoons of nutmeg.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and cinnamon, and mix well.

  3. Line a pie dish with puff pastry or grease it with butter.

  4. Optionally, add 3 ounces of currants before baking.

  5. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, or boil in a buttered mold for 1 hour.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Rice + milktop 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a starchy batter that sets as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the pudding and help it set firm when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice cooks in, giving a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice batter. Ground rice must be fully cooked in the liquid so its starch gelatinises; undercooked rice leaves a grainy, pasty texture and a thin set.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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