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Dessert

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

A baked rice pudding made with milk, rice, sugar, raisins, and cinnamon, without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Combine the rice, milk, sugar, raisins, and cinnamon or allspice in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Stir the mixture 2 or 3 times during the first hour of baking.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding body and a soft, tender texture.
Milk
Serves as the cooking liquid that slowly reduces into a creamy, custard-like base around the rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown slightly during the long, slow bake.
Raisins
Plump as they absorb moisture during baking, adding sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir during the first hour of baking. Rice grains and starch settle toward the bottom of the dish while the milk is still thin. Stirring keeps them evenly distributed and reduces scorching on the base, so the pudding sets evenly throughout.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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