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Dessert

Empress Pudding

A layered rice pudding baked with butter, sugar, jam, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Empress Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk until tender and fairly dry.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and salt to the rice mixture.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Line the edge of a pie dish with pastry.

  2. Spread a thin layer of rice on the bottom of the dish.

  3. Cover thickly with jam or stewed fruit.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of rice.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 minutes.

  2. Serve with boiled custard sauce.

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

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

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Cooks the rice into a tender, creamy base as it simmers and absorbs the liquid.
Rice
Forms the soft, starchy body of the pudding that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Jam or stewed fruit
Provides sweetness, moisture and fruity flavour between the rice layers.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice until tender and fairly dry. Rice must cook fully in the milk so it softens, and it should be fairly dry so the layers hold their shape and the pudding does not turn watery when baked.

“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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