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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A baked pudding made with ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, currants, candied peel, and topped with nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with medium short pastry and prick the bottoms.

  3. Mix the ground rice with a little cold milk.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the remaining milk, then add butter and sugar, boiling for 10 minutes while stirring continuously.

  2. Once cooled, add eggs, grated lemon rind, candied peel, and half the currants.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the pastry, leaving room for rising.

  2. Distribute the remaining currants on top and sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until set.

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

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

  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. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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 as it boils, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the other ingredients set into.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs begin to set at high heat, so adding them to very hot milk can scramble them and leave the pudding grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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