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Dessert

Quite Ciiea.p Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Quite Ciiea.p Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly and pour 1½ cups of milk over it.

  2. Stew the rice slowly until quite tender.

Make the mixture

  1. Before removing from heat, stir in 2 oz. of butter and 3 oz. of sugar.

  2. Allow to cool slightly, then add 4 well-whisked eggs and the grated lemon rind.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 to 40 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Whole rice
Softens into the pudding body as it stews in milk, giving it its main structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy, moist base of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smoother texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the finished pudding a tender crust.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the eggs. If the mixture is still very hot when the whisked eggs go in, they can scramble instead of blending smoothly, leaving a grainy texture. Cooling it slightly first helps the eggs incorporate evenly and set gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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