Skip to main content
Dessert

A Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding with milk, cinnamon, eggs, butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, served in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A 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.

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in warm water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the rice, milk, and cinnamon.

  4. Simmer the mixture until the rice is tender.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Make the custard

  1. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  2. Add the melted butter to the mixture.

  3. Add the cream to the mixture.

  4. Add the sugar to the mixture.

  5. Add the nutmeg to the mixture.

  6. Add the lemon peel to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Place the mixture into a dish lined with puff pastry.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells and softens as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding and giving it a firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy base of the pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a smoother, softer texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Beaten eggs added to very hot mixture can scramble rather than blend smoothly. Cooling the rice mixture first lets the eggs thicken it evenly into a smooth custard when baked.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes