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Dessert

Ground Rice

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, sugar, salt, and almond flavor, set in a mold and served cold with preserves and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ground Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Steep the rice in a little cold milk while the rest of the milk is boiling.

  2. Add the steeped rice to the boiling milk along with the sugar.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the almond flavor, then pour into a mold previously dipped in cold water.

Set and serve

  1. Let it stand until cold, then serve with preserves and 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 + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it boils and helps the pudding set when cold.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a creamy pudding.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly. As the rice starch heats in the milk, it swells and thickens the mixture. Constant stirring keeps the rice from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Peanutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

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