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Dessert

Rice Blancmange

A sweet rice dessert made by cooking ground rice in flavored milk, set in a mold, served with jam or fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Prepare

  1. Soak the bay leaves or lemon rind in the milk until flavored, or add a few drops of almond or vanilla extract.

  2. Mix the ground rice smoothly with a portion of the milk, then gradually add the rest along with the butter and sugar.

Cook and set

  1. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir over heat until it boils and leaves the sides of the pan, about 10 minutes.

  2. Turn the mixture into a damp mold and let it set in a cold place.

Serve

  1. Before serving, turn it out onto a glass dish and garnish with jam or stewed fruit, and serve with custard if desired.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + ricetop 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
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blancmange its body and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a smooth, creamy mixture.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the set dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances its mild flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice mixture over heat. Ground rice starch must be stirred while the mixture heats and boils so it thickens evenly; stopping early leaves it thin, and letting it sit can cause lumps or scorching on the pan base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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