Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Flummery

Rice Flummery is a sweet milk-based dessert made with rice flour, cinnamon, lemon peel, sugar, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the rice flour with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Dissolve the isinglass in the remaining milk while boiling.

Make the flummery

  1. Add sugar, cinnamon, and lemon peel to the boiling milk.

  2. Stir in the smooth rice paste and boil for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and briskly mix in the pounded almonds.

Mould and set

  1. Pour the mixture while scalding hot into molds previously dipped in cold water.

  2. For a marbled effect, drop in a little cochineal while pouring.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, tender body as it boils.
Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Cow's milk
Forms the main liquid, giving the flummery its creamy richness.
Pounded almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slightly grainy texture to the set mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice paste into the boiling milk. Rice flour clumps easily if added to hot liquid without constant stirring. Boiling it for 10 to 15 minutes while stirring cooks the starch evenly, so the mixture thickens smoothly and without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, milk, cinnamon, sugar, almond. 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

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes