Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with butter, milk, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in 2 cups of boiling water for 10 minutes, then drain the water.

  2. Let the saucepan sit by the fire for a bit.

  3. Add the butter to the rice and mix with a fork.

  4. Stir in the milk and let it simmer for 30 minutes until the rice is soft.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs with the sugar in a bowl.

  2. Grate the nutmeg over the rice and mix well before adding the eggs.

Bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish well, pour the mixture in, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding and softens as it simmers in milk.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice in milk. The rice must simmer gently until fully soft before the eggs are added. Undercooked rice stays firm after baking, and rapid boiling can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice Batter CakesRice Batter Cakes11 recipes