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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from rice, suet, milk, and spices, baked or boiled with eggs and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet and mix it with sugar and milk in a pot.

  2. Wash and pick the rice, soak it in water for 30 minutes, then tie it in a cloth with currants or raisins.

  3. Boil for nearly 2 hours, leaving room for the rice to swell.

Bake and serve

  1. Grate nutmeg over the top and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  2. Serve with melted butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix well boiled rice with beaten eggs, cream or milk, butter, lemon peel, nutmeg, brandy, and currants dusted with flour.

  4. Line a dish with paste, fill it with the mixture, and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  5. For boiling, use a well-buttered mold and cook for 1 hour.

  6. For ground rice pudding, stir ground rice into milk with lime peel and cinnamon, simmer for 15 minutes, then mix in beaten eggs, sugar, and nutmeg, and bake as before.

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Rice
Provides the body of the pudding and absorbs liquid as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a moist, tender texture.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a smooth base for the ground rice version.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moist texture.

The step that matters

Leaving room for the rice to swell. Rice absorbs liquid and expands while boiling. If it is packed tightly into the cloth or mold, it can burst or cook unevenly, so space must be left for it to swell.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, rice, cream, butter, lemon, 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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