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Dessert

Boiled Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from boiled rice, butter, sugar, spices, currants, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water with the bay leaf and cinnamon until tender.

  2. Drain the rice in a sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat the rice with the butter, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the currants, eggs, and milk, and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin and boil for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, moist texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the rice and eggs form a creamy custard-like base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the butter and eggs.
Currants
Add concentrated fruity sweetness and chewy bursts throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin and boil for 1.5 hours. Buttering the basin keeps the pudding from sticking when turned out. The eggs set as they heat, so the pudding needs a steady, gentle boil to cook through without becoming rubbery or dense.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, 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 →

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