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Dessert

A Good French Rice Pudding, or Gatea J De Riz

A creamy rice pudding made with milk, cream, butter, sugar, lemon zest, eggs, and baked in a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Gatea J 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.

Make the rice base

  1. Swell the rice in the milk or milk and cream in a pot until tender.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, salt, and lemon zest, and simmer until well combined.

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

Prepare the pan

  1. Grease a small copper stewpan with clarified butter, coating it evenly. Turn the pan upside down to drain off excess butter, then coat it with stale bread crumbs. Sprinkle more clarified butter on the bread crumbs lining the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the rice mixture. Pour the mixture into the prepared stewpan and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.

  2. Let it cool slightly before turning it out onto a plate.

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

Rice
Swells in the milk and softens into a tender, creamy body for the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice absorbs and cooks in, giving the pudding its base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help bind the pudding as it sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that give the pudding a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the pudding. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring it hard would deflate the foam and leave a dense result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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