Name: Another Way to Make Ground-rice Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound ground rice; 1¼ cups milk; ¼ pound butter; 5 egg yolks; 3 egg whites; 2 tablespoons orange-flower water; a little grated nutmeg

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Ground-rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

Mix the ground rice with the milk in a saucepan.
Stir the mixture until it boils.
Add the butter and let it cool slightly.

Finish and cook

Sweeten the mixture and add the beaten egg yolks, egg whites, orange-flower water, and nutmeg.
Bake in a Dutch oven or boil for 30 minutes.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice: Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and soft setting.
Egg yolks: Enrich the custard and help it set, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites: Add lightness and help the pudding set with structure when cooked.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that the ground rice swells and thickens in.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice and milk until it boils. Ground rice can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unattended. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly rather than clumping or sticking.

Swap the orange

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

Coconutfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

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

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Another Way to Make Ground-rice Pudding