Why it works: Tea and rice work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 197 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Rice Blanc Mange
Ingredients
Directions
Make the rice
Boil 1 tea-cup of rice in a small quantity of water until it is nearly bursting.
Add ½ pint of milk and boil it to a mush, stirring constantly.
Season with sugar, white wine, and nutmeg.
Set and serve
Dip the mold in water and fill it with the rice mixture.
Once cold, turn it out onto a dish.
Surround with boiled custard and garnish with marmalade.
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.
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Tea + ricetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together197 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,779 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Tea + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together738 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Tea + nutmegtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Swells and breaks down in liquid, giving the pudding its body and thick, soft structure.
- Milk
- Cooks with the rice to form a creamy mush and adds richness and moisture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk and wine.
- White wine
- Adds acidity and aroma that lift the flavour of the mild rice and milk.
The step that matters
Boil the milk and rice to a mush while stirring constantly. Rice starch thickens as it cooks and can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring keeps the mixture even and prevents burning, and the mixture must be thick enough to hold its shape when turned out.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, rice, milk, sugar, white wine):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Gingerfits about as well
- Nutmegthe original
- Peppermintfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against tea, rice, milk, sugar, white wine. 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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