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Dessert

A Kentucky Pudding

A rice pudding made with milk, raisins, and topped with marshmallows and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Kentucky Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in milk or cream until tender.

  3. Add sugar, raisins, vanilla, and salt.

  4. Bake slowly.

Top and garnish

  1. Cover the pudding with marshmallows, waiting until it is not too hot.

  2. Garnish with candied cherries.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter for the sauce.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add brown sugar and cream to the sauce.

  4. Set the sauce in a pan of hot water.

  5. Stir the sauce until creamy and smooth, but do not boil.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Softens in milk or cream and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk or cream
Cooks the rice and gives the pudding its moist, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and gives it a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce without boiling. Flour-thickened sauces made with cream can curdle or turn grainy if boiled. Gentle heat in a water bath keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

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