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Dessert

Rice Meringue Pudding-

A baked rice pudding topped with a lemon‑flavored meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Meringue 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 rice base

  1. Combine 1 quart milk and 1 cup rice in a pot.

  2. Simmer slowly until thick and rice is tender.

  3. While hot, stir in 1 tablespoon butter, 3 tablespoons sugar, and yolks of 3 eggs.

  4. Add salt to taste and grate in the peel of 1 lemon.

  5. Pour mixture into a shallow pudding dish lined with pastry.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

Top with meringue

  1. Beat 3 egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 6 tablespoons powdered sugar and juice of 1 lemon.

  3. Spread meringue over the top of the pudding.

  4. Return to oven for 5 minutes.

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the thick, creamy body of the pudding.
Rice
Thickens as it simmers in milk, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, adding richness and firmness to the base.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whipped whites to stabilize the meringue and sweeten it.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks; under-beaten whites collapse and weep, while adding sugar gradually helps keep the foam stable and glossy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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