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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet custard made from rice, milk, cream, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and nutmeg, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Pick and blanch the rice.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the rice, cinnamon, lemon peel, and boiling milk.

  3. Stew gently, stirring occasionally, until thick.

  4. Remove the cinnamon and lemon peel.

Bake and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat together the cream, eggs, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  3. Bake in a gentle oven at 350°F (175°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. 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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 thickens as it stews in the milk.
Milk
Cooks the rice and forms the creamy liquid that sets into the custard.
Eggs
Set the custard during baking, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, producing a softer, silkier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Bake in a gentle oven until set. Eggs set when heated gently; high heat can curdle the custard and leave it grainy or watery, so bake at a moderate temperature and stop when just set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon, 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.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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