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Dessert

Common Rice Pudding

A baked milk and rice pudding flavored with nutmeg or lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Common 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a pot, combine the milk, rice, sugar, and butter. Heat until the butter melts.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs into the milk mixture.

  3. Add nutmeg or lemon zest to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until firm.

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and richness.
Rice
Absorbs the milk as it bakes, giving the pudding its body and creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice softens in and the eggs set into.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly at the surface.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer mouthfeel and smoother texture.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose, while overbaking can make the custard grainy and dry. Check that the centre is just firm before removing it.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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