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Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with milk, sugar, bitter almonds, eggs, butter, candied orange peel, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until soft and thick.

  2. Sweeten with sugar while still hot.

  3. Pound the bitter almonds to a paste and mix in.

  4. Whisk in the eggs and let the mixture cool.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour into a thickly buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and a floured cloth.

  3. Boil the pudding for 30 minutes.

  4. Let it stand for 2 to 3 minutes before turning out.

  5. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or fresh fruit.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Cooks into a soft, thick body that gives the pudding its structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy, moist base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its flavour.
Eggs
Set as the mixture cooks, giving the pudding firmness and binding it together.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Filling the basin completely. Eggs set as the pudding cooks, so any air gaps or a loosely filled mold can leave the pudding uneven or misshapen. Packing the mixture fully and buttering the basin well helps it hold its shape and release cleanly when turned out.

Swap the orange

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

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

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