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Dessert

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding made with long‑grain rice, skim milk, optional eggs, sugar, nutmeg, butter, currants, served with cold butter and sugar, boiled milk, or preserved fruit.

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 ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a deep dish, combine the rice and skim milk.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours until the rice is tender.

Boil

  1. For boiling, place ½ pound of rice in a long narrow bag and add to boiling water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes until the rice swells.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold butter and sugar, boiled milk with sugar and nutmeg, or preserved fruit.

Enrich and boil again

  1. For a richer pudding, mix in beaten eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and butter or suet after boiling.

  2. Tie the mixture in a buttered or floured cloth and boil for an additional 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.

  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 + 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

Long-grain rice
Provides the starch that swells and softens into the pudding's body as it cooks.
Skim milk
Supplies the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs, giving the pudding its creamy moisture.
Eggs
In the richer version, they set when heated, adding structure and a custard-like richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the mild flavour of the milk and rice.
Butter or suet
Adds fat, which contributes richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the richer pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes until the rice swells. Rice starch only gelatinises fully with enough sustained heat and water. Stopping early leaves grains firm at the centre, so the cook should check that the rice is soft and swollen before moving on.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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