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Dessert

Carolina Pudding

A sweet pudding made with rice, apples, butter, sherry, and cloves, baked and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Carolina Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Blanch and boil the rice in milk until soft and absorbed.

  2. Boil the cloves with the rice and remove them.

  3. Beat in the butter once the rice is cool.

Prepare the apple pulp

  1. Bake the apples in their skins.

  2. Sieve the apple pulp.

  3. Combine the apple pulp with the rice mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Bake the dish.

  3. Serve with a sweet sauce.

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. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Not stated in the steps; leave out.
Rice
Softens in milk and thickens the pudding into a soft, set body.
Apples
Provide moisture, tartness and fruit flavour through the baked pulp.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the rice mixture.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk until soft and absorbed. If the rice is undercooked or the milk is not fully absorbed, the pudding stays grainy and watery. Starch in rice needs sustained heat and liquid to swell and gelatinise fully before the mixture is combined and baked.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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

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