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Dessert

Rice Flour Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk, rice flour, eggs, sugar, butter, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Flour Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Flour 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 base

  1. Combine milk and rice flour in a pot.

  2. Boil until thickened.

Enrich and bake

  1. Beat eggs in a bowl, then mix in sugar and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the thickened milk and flour and stir well.

  3. Grate nutmeg over the mixture.

  4. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable base as it cooks.
Eggs
Set during baking, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like firmness.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the rice flour thickens and the eggs set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the thickened base. If the hot base is very hot when eggs are added, they can scramble. Stirring well keeps the eggs evenly distributed so the pudding sets smoothly in the oven rather than in lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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