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Dessert

Boiled Rice and Fruit Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with milk, sultanas or currants, sugar, and eggs, set in a mold and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Rice and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk until tender.

  2. Let it cool, then add the sultanas or currants, sugar, and eggs.

  3. Press the mixture into a mold and tie it securely.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Turn it out and pour sweet sauce around it.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Whole rice
Cooked in milk until tender, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks the rice and gives the pudding its creamy, soft texture.
Sultanas or currants
Add sweetness and chewy bits of fruit throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, dairy flavour of the milk.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when moulded and boiled.

The step that matters

Press the mixture into a mold and tie it securely. The mixture is loose and wet before boiling. If the mold is not packed firmly or the cloth is not sealed tightly, water can seep in and the pudding can fall apart or turn soggy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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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