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Dessert

Simple Rice Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Simple 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.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water until nearly soft, then drain.

  2. Add milk to the rice and cook until quite soft.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in the yolks of four eggs and four tablespoons of sugar.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with the same quantity of sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites on top of the pudding and add your chosen flavoring.

  3. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the top is slightly browned.

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the bulk and body that holds the pudding together as it softens in milk.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that cooks the rice into a creamy, tender base.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the pudding as they set, giving a rich, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives a light topping which browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the topping brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites trap air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Underbeaten whites stay runny and will deflate or weep on top of the pudding instead of forming a light, browned layer.

“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

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