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Dessert

Rice Blanc-mange

Rice Blanc-Mange is a sweet rice pudding made with ground rice, milk, sugar, flavoring, and served with boiled custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the ground rice smooth with a little milk.

  2. Bring 2 cups of milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the rice mixture while boiling.

Cook and serve

  1. Sweeten and flavor to taste.

  2. Boil in a double saucepan for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve with boiled custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blanc-mange its set body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a smooth, creamy dessert.

The step that matters

Stir in the rice mixture while boiling. Ground rice must be fully smoothed in a little cold milk first, or it will lump when added to hot milk. Keep stirring as it goes in so the starch disperses evenly and thickens the mixture smoothly.

“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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