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Breakfast

Breakfast Pudding

A hot pudding of rice, barley, raisins, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Place rice, barley, and salt in a pot with enough cold water to keep boiling slowly without burning.

  2. When the rice and barley swell and begin to soften, add the raisins.

  3. Transfer to a double boiler and cook for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with cream and sugar.

  2. This can be made the night before and warmed for breakfast.

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 + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Raisin + barleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 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

Rice
Breaks down during long cooking to give the pudding a thick, creamy body.
Pearled barley
Its starch thickens slowly and gives the pudding a chewy, tender texture.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and moisture as they plump in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the heat gentle. Starchy grains scorch easily on the bottom of a pot. A slow simmer with enough water, and a double boiler for the long cook, spreads heat gently so the grains soften evenly without sticking or burning.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, barley, cream, 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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