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Dessert

Good Ground Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, and brandy, baked with a pastry border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Good Ground Rice Pudding

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.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the ground rice with ½ cup of milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into 1½ cups of boiling milk.

  3. Stir constantly over gentle heat for 10 to 12 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the butter, sugar, and salt until combined.

  6. Gradually mix in the egg yolks and egg whites quickly.

  7. Add the grated rind of lemon and brandy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a buttered dish with a border of pastry.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish.

  3. Drizzle clarified butter on top.

  4. Moisten the pastry with cold water.

  5. Sprinkle sugar over the pastry, avoiding the pudding.

  6. Bake in a very gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks.
Eggs
Egg yolks and whites add richness and help the pudding set when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the ground rice cooks into a creamy custard.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps brown the top during baking.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the egg yolks and egg whites quickly. Adding eggs to a hot mixture can scramble them if they are not blended in fast and evenly. Working quickly keeps the eggs smooth so the pudding bakes to an even, creamy set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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