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Dessert

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

A boiled rice pudding made with rice, milk, butter, sugar, salt, lemon rind, almond paste, eggs, and optional vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Good Boiled Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Put the rice into the cold milk.

  2. Heat the mixture slowly.

  3. Simmer for one hour.

Make the pudding mixture

  1. Add the butter, sugar, salt, lemon rind, pounded almonds, and whisked eggs to the hot milk.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour it into a well-buttered basin or mold, filling it completely.

  2. Tie buttered paper and a floured cloth over the basin.

  3. Boil for exactly one hour.

  4. Remove from the pot.

  5. Let it stand for two to three minutes.

  6. Turn it out.

  7. Serve with sweet sauce or stewed fruit.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells as it simmers in the milk, giving the pudding its body and bulk.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a soft, creamy base and provides moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother texture and softer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the milk and almonds.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before pouring it into the basin. Adding whisked eggs to very hot milk can scramble them. Cooling the mixture first helps the eggs set smoothly into a uniform custard-like texture when boiled.

Swap the vanilla

The recipe marks vanilla as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, almond, lemon, egg):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, almond, lemon, 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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