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Russian Seed, or Ground Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, lemon peel, cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Russian Seed, or Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the rice in the milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

  2. Let it cool, then add sugar, nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish and bake with a crust around it.

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

Rice
Starch that thickens as it cooks in the milk, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and gives the pudding its creamy base.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding into a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Let it cool before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs blend smoothly so the pudding sets evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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