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Dessert

Baked Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding flavored with lemon rind, currants, brandy, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the rice and milk

  1. Put lemon rind and milk in a saucepan and let infuse until milk is flavored with lemon.

  2. Boil rice in water with a small amount of salt until tender, then drain thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Beat eggs and stir them into the strained milk along with butter, brandy, currants, sugar, and rice.

  2. Line edges of a baking dish with puff pastry, pour in pudding mixture, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 3 hours.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Rice
Provides the body of the pudding and absorbs the milk as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives it creaminess.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, smoother texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding mixture. Baking slowly at a low temperature lets the egg custard set gently without curdling or drying out. Too much heat can make the eggs grainy and toughen the texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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