Skip to main content
Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with milk, sugar, lemon rind, bitter almonds, eggs, and optional candied orange rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil and cook until the rice is soft and thick.

  3. Stir in the sugar, grated lemon rind, and pounded bitter almonds while the mixture is still hot.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the whisked eggs and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Grease a basin or mold with butter and pour in the rice mixture until full.

  2. Cover with a buttered paper and a floured cloth, then boil for exactly one hour.

  3. Let it stand for two to three minutes before turning it out onto a plate.

  4. Serve with sweet sauce, fruit syrup, or a compote of fresh fruit.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

Whole rice
Cooks down in the milk to a soft, thick body that sets the pudding's texture.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy base of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its soft, tender body.
Eggs
Set when boiled, binding the rice mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in a covered basin. Eggs must set through gentle, steady heat. Too vigorous a boil or a loose cover can make the pudding rubbery or watery, so the cloth and paper should seal the basin well.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, lemon, almond, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes