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Dessert

Rice Popple

Rice Popple is a baked rice pudding made with rice, milk, sugar, butter, corn starch, and optional flavoring, topped with cherries and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Popple

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 rice pudding

  1. Wash the rice and add it to a pot with the milk, sugar, butter, and flavoring.

  2. Mix the corn-starch with a little milk to dissolve it, then add to the pot.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally until thickened and browned.

  4. Remove from the oven and let cool, then take off the brown skin.

Top and finish

  1. Top with preserved cherries.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and spread over the cherries irregularly.

  3. Sprinkle with pulverized sugar and return to the oven to brown.

  4. Serve with lemon sauce, cream sauce, or whipped cream.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the body of the pudding as its starch softens and thickens during baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks give the topping its light, airy structure and help it brown.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface during baking.
Corn-starch
Thickens the liquid so the pudding sets to a spoonable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until thickened and browned, stirring occasionally. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and milk can scorch on the bottom, so stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the custard smooth. Cornstarch thickens only when hot enough, so the pudding should be checked for set before it is removed.

“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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