Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

A baked or steamed rice pudding made with suet, sugar, nutmeg, currants, and milk, without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding Without Eggs

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.

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a small pudding dish or basin.

  2. Add the chopped suet, sugar, nutmeg, and washed currants.

  3. Pour the milk over the mixture.

  4. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours, or cover with buttered paper and steam in a saucepan with a little water for 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch absorbs milk and swells as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and sets into a creamy, custard-like texture.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the pudding richer and more tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and nutmeg.

The step that matters

Baking or steaming at gentle heat. Low, gentle heat lets the rice soften and absorb the milk slowly. Too much heat can scorch the milk at the bottom of the dish or make it boil over and turn grainy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes