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Dessert

Dixie Pudding

A sweet rice pudding flavored with cocoa and raisins, thickened with cornstarch and served with a cocoa sauce.

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 ↓

Dixie Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cooked rice and sweet milk.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix cocoa, sugar, cornstarch, and salt, then add to the rice mixture.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly until thick.

  4. Once thickened, remove from heat and pour into water-rinsed cups or molds.

Mold and serve

  1. Set aside to cool until molded, then turn out onto sauce plates.

  2. Serve with cocoa pudding 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Rice + cocoatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs liquid as it cooks.
Egg
Sets with heat to give the pudding structure, though the record lists it without a step.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that gelatinizes the starch and gives the pudding a creamy texture.
Cocoa
Supplies chocolate flavour and colour to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set pudding's flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the pudding its firm, molded shape.

The step that matters

Cook in the double boiler until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when heated and stirred, and gentle indirect heat in a double boiler prevents scorching and lumps. Stopping too early leaves the pudding too loose to hold its shape when molded.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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