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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and optional raisins and flavoring.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in 2 cups of milk or water until tender.

Make the custard

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten eggs, sugar, salt, and remaining milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  3. Dot the surface with small pieces of butter.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Flavor with lemon or vanilla, if desired.

  3. Add raisins if using.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it cooks and gives the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the custard and give it a tender structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks the rice and becomes the creamy custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and melts into the surface for flavor and moisture.

The step that matters

Bake gently in a steady oven. Egg proteins set as the custard heats. A steady, moderate oven lets the custard set evenly and stay smooth. Excess heat can curdle the eggs and make the texture grainy or watery.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, butter, sugar, lemon):

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

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