Name: Rice Pudding
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 1½ cups sugar; ½ pound butter; 1½ cups raisins; 1 cup boiled rice; sweet milk (enough to nearly fill a 6-quart pan)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix and bake

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, butter, raisins, and boiled rice.
Add enough sweet milk to nearly fill a 6-quart pan.
Pour the mixture into the pan and bake for 30 minutes.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together565 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set the custard and bind the rice, raisins and milk into a firm pudding.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Boiled rice: Provides the body of the pudding and absorbs some of the milk.
Sweet milk: Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.