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Dessert

Rice Blancmange

A sweet rice custard made with ground rice, milk, sugar, butter, and flavorings, set in a mold and served with jam or compote.

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 Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. Mix the ground rice with about ½ pint of milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, sugar, butter, and your chosen flavoring.

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

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

Set and serve

  1. Grease a mold with salad oil.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the greased mold.

  3. Let the mixture set completely.

  4. Once set, turn it out of the mold.

  5. Garnish with jam or serve with fruit compote.

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 boils, giving the blancmange its body and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice starch thickens into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the milk and rice.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice batter into the boiling milk. Rice starch must be stirred constantly while boiling so it gelatinizes evenly; otherwise it can clump or scorch on the saucepan base, and the mixture will not thicken smoothly.

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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