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Dessert

Rice Pudding with Crushed Fruit

Rice pudding made by cooking rice with water, milk, sugar, and nutmeg, then chilled and served with crushed sweetened fruit.

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

Rice Pudding with Crushed Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the washed rice in boiling water until almost soft, then drain and rinse with cold water.

  2. Place the rice in a double boiler with 2 cups of water and cook until perfectly tender.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the sweet milk, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Add this mixture to the rice in the double boiler and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Rinse molds with cold water, fill them with the rice mixture, and chill until firm.

Serve

  1. Unmold the rice onto individual dishes and pour crushed sweetened fruit over the top before serving.

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. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Starch that softens and thickens into the body of the pudding as it cooks.
Egg
Sets when heated, helping the rice mixture hold its shape once chilled.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and richness, giving the pudding a creamy, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the rice. Egg proteins set when heated, so cooking the mixture too hard or too long can make it curdle or turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle in the double boiler so the custard sets smoothly and the pudding unmolds cleanly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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