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Rice Pudding, with Dry Currants

Rice pudding made with boiled dry rice, dry currants, sugar, butter, and beaten egg, boiled for about an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Pudding, with Dry Currants

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the boiled rice, currants, sugar, butter, and beaten egg.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a floured cloth or mold.

  3. Boil for nearly 1 hour.

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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled rice
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding once it is set.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
Egg
Binds the rice and fruit together so the pudding holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer, moister texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the surface slightly.

The step that matters

Transfer the mixture into a floured cloth or mold. The cloth or mold must be well floured and sealed so the pudding keeps its shape and does not absorb too much water while boiling.

Swap the currant

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

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

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