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Dessert

Rice Florendines

A custard-like dessert made with milk, rice flour, eggs, sugar, butter, spices, and brandy or rose-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Rice Florendines

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Mix rice flour with cold milk to create a thick paste.

  3. Stir the rice flour mixture into the boiling milk until it thickens to the consistency of thick molasses.

  4. Add the butter to the hot mixture and stir until melted.

Finish and bake

  1. Let the mixture cool, then beat the eggs and stir them in along with the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brandy or rose-water.

  2. Pour the mixture into pie plates with an under crust only.

  3. Bake until set.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice flour thickens into a custard.
Rice flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a thick, smooth custard that holds its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling its firm, sliceable structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly at the edges.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour paste into the boiling milk. Rice flour must be fully dispersed in cold liquid first, then added to hot milk while stirring constantly; otherwise it clumps and the custard turns lumpy and thin instead of smooth and thick.

“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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