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Dessert

Rice Pudding

Rice pudding made with rice, water, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, salt, grape juice, raisins, currants, citron, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in water.

Mix and bake

  1. While the rice is hot, add butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, salt, grape juice, raisins, currants, citron, and cream.

  2. Mix well and pour into a buttered dish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Rice + grapetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together839 recipes

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

  5. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it cooks and absorbs the liquid.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its custard-like structure.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, making the pudding soft and smooth.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the hot rice. Eggs can scramble if they meet very hot rice too abruptly. Mixing them in while the rice is still hot but then baking gently helps them set into a smooth custard rather than curdling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, grape, raisin. 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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