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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding made with milk, sugar, eggs, butter, raisins, and a frosted egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice until done.

  2. Evaporate the water over gentle heat until dry.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, stir together the milk, sugar, beaten eggs, melted butter, salt, and raisins.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and finish

  1. Frost the pudding with the reserved egg white.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding, absorbing the liquid and giving it a soft, starchy texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness distributed through the pudding.

The step that matters

Evaporate the water over gentle heat until dry. Excess water left in the cooked rice would dilute the custard and keep the pudding from setting firmly. Gentle heat drives off moisture without scorching the starch.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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