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Dessert

A Good Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked with a pastry border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Good Ground Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix the ground rice with the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly for 10 to 12 minutes over gentle heat.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter, sugar, and salt until well combined.

  3. Quickly mix in the egg yolks, egg whites, lemon rind, and brandy until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a buttered dish with a border of pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish.

  3. Drizzle clarified butter over the mixture.

  4. Moisten the pastry with a brush.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

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

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a soft, custard-like body as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the pudding and help it set firm and smooth when baked.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the pudding rise and hold its structure in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly on top.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice and milk. Ground rice settles and scorches on the bottom of the pan if not stirred constantly, and it must thicken fully before the eggs are added so the eggs do not curdle or turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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