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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from rice flour, vanilla, suet, marrow, nuts, dried fruit, jam, cream, and Maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pistachio share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 80 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the rice flour, vanilla, suet, marrow, salt, nutmeg, pistachio kernels, ratafia cakes, dried cherries, and apple jam together in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream and Maraschino and mix well.

  3. Tie the mixture tightly in a buttered cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1½ hours.

  2. When serving, sprinkle with pounded sugar and chopped pistachio kernels.

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. Nutmeg + pistachiotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rice + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Provides the starchy body that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a moist, tender texture as it melts.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a soft, moist interior.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the mixture.
Apple jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour, along with moisture.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture tightly in a buttered cloth. A tight, well-buttered cloth keeps the pudding compact and stops it sticking, so it holds its shape during boiling and releases cleanly when served.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, vanilla, beef, nutmeg, pistachio, cream):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, vanilla, beef, nutmeg, pistachio, cream. 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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