Skip to main content
Dessert

White Puddings

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, butter, eggs, currants, bread, rose-water, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

White Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender.

  2. Slice the butter and mix it with the hot rice until melted.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then beat in the eggs.

  4. Add the currants, grated bread, rose-water, sugar, and nutmeg.

Fill and cook

  1. Prepare the skins as directed in the previous recipe and fill them.

  2. Boil the filled skins for half an hour.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it a soft, tender body when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, moist texture.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to soften it and adds moisture to the filling.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit through the filling.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the filling hold together.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool, then beat in the eggs. Adding eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling first keeps the filling smooth, so the eggs bind it evenly and set gently when the filled skins are boiled.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, bread, rose, 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 white pudding recipes

Egg 3 See all 22 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes