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Dessert

A Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with rice, raisins, milk, cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg 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 ↓

A Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the rice, raisins, and salt in just enough water until soft.

  2. Add the milk and cream to the rice mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and nutmeg, then stir into the pudding.

  4. Let it simmer for five minutes.

Alternative

  1. Alternatively, omit the eggs and sugar, and serve with butter and sugar.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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
Softens into the body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a creamy base.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to thicken the milk and cream into a custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy pudding.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, silkier texture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soften.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the dairy.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the eggs. Eggs thicken when heated gently; if the pudding boils hard or the eggs are added to very hot liquid without stirring, they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cream, 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.

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