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Dessert

Rice Flummery

Rice flummery is a thickened milk dessert made with ground rice and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flummery

  1. Mix the ground rice with enough cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the paste into the boiling milk that has been sweetened and flavored with the pounded almonds.

  3. Boil the mixture, stirring constantly, until it leaves the bottom of the saucepan.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool until stiff.

  2. Once set, turn it out and decorate with blanched almonds cut into straws.

  3. Serve with cream or thin custard, or a sauce made with wine, lemon juice, and sugar.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 boils, giving the mixture body so it can set firm when cooled.
Milk
Forms the base of the dish, and its proteins help the mixture set softly as it cools.
Bitter almonds
Contribute a distinct nutty aroma that flavors the milk before the rice is added.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture, stirring constantly, until it leaves the bottom of the saucepan. Ground rice starch thickens only when heated fully, and stirring prevents scorching and lumps. Stopping too early leaves the mixture thin and unable to set in the mold.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, almond, cream, sauce, wine, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, almond, cream, sauce, wine, 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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