Skip to main content
Main

Bice Gruel

A thin rice gruel flavored with cinnamon and orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Bice Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 4 pints of water in a pot.

  2. Add 2 ounces of ground rice and ¼ ounce of cinnamon.

  3. Cook for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of orange marmalade before serving.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the water into a smooth, starchy gruel as it cooks.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright citrus acidity at the end.

The step that matters

Cook for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ground rice can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot if left alone. Regular stirring keeps the starch dispersed, so the gruel cooks evenly and thickens smoothly rather than clumping.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes