Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Ground Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, rice, sugar, butter, eggs, and nutmeg or lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Common Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a pot, combine milk, rice, sugar, and butter.

  3. Cook until the rice is tender.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them into the rice mixture.

  2. Add nutmeg or lemon zest to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes or until firm.

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

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks and softens in the milk.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding a firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until just firm. Egg proteins set as they heat, so pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while baking too long can make it grainy and dry. Check for a gentle wobble in the centre.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice Batter CakesRice Batter Cakes11 recipes