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Dessert

Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, lemon rind, cinnamon or laurel, sugar, butter, eggs, and optional brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ground Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the custard base

  1. Heat the milk gently with lemon rind and cinnamon or laurel leaves until flavored.

  2. Remove the flavoring ingredients and bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Mix the ground rice with a little cold milk until smooth, then add to the boiling milk and stir until thick.

  4. Transfer the rice mixture to a bowl and let it cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Mix in sugar, butter, and beaten eggs.

  2. Pour into a buttered dish and bake in a gentle oven (300°F/150°C).

  3. If the oven is too hot, the pudding will be watery.

  4. Add brandy for flavor and an extra egg for richness if desired.

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 + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens into a pudding.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Add richness and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Keep the oven gentle. A hot oven makes the eggs set too fast and squeezes out liquid, so the pudding turns watery. Baking slowly lets the custard set evenly and stay creamy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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