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Dessert

A Good French Rice Pudding, or Gîteau De Riz

A French rice pudding made with milk, rice, butter, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and bread crumbs, baked until browned.

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

A Good French Rice Pudding, or Gîteau De Riz

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. In a pot, swell the rice in the milk (or milk and cream) until tender.

  2. Add butter, sugar, salt, and lemon rind, and simmer until the rice is fully swollen.

  3. Remove from heat, let cool slightly, and stir in the beaten egg yolks gradually.

Assemble and bake

  1. Coat a small baking pan with clarified butter, then sprinkle with stale bread crumbs.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold them into the rice mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan without disturbing the crumbs.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour until browned and 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. 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. Milk + ricetop 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. 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

Carolina rice
Swells in the milk to form the thick, starchy body of the pudding.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs and cooks in, giving the pudding its creamy base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set firm as the pudding bakes.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff whites hold air bubbles that give the pudding lift. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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