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Dessert

French Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with rice, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon rind, and layered with grated bread crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French 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

  1. Combine rice and milk in a pot and simmer over low heat until the milk is absorbed and the rice is soft.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  3. Stir in eggs, butter, sugar, and lemon rind until well combined.

Bake

  1. Butter a pudding mold and sprinkle a layer of grated bread crust inside.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 softens as it absorbs the milk.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, providing moisture and a creamy texture.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding structure and firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool slightly before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot rice can scramble or cook unevenly, so a slight cooling keeps the mixture smooth and lets the eggs set gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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