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Dessert

Rice Blanc-mange

A sweet rice pudding made with ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice custard

  1. Mix the ground rice with a little milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, butter, sugar, and lemon peel.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then stir in the rice batter.

  4. Let it boil for 10 minutes, or until it pulls away from the sides of the saucepan.

Set and unmold

  1. Grease a mold with salad oil, pour in the rice mixture, and let it cool completely before turning it out.

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. Butter + milktop 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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blanc-mange body and a set texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice starch thickens into a creamy custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer mouthfeel in the set dessert.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and contributes to the smooth, tender texture of the set custard.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture pulls away from the sides. Rice starch only thickens fully when the mixture is hot enough to gelatinize it. Stopping early leaves a thin custard that will not set firmly when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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