Name: Blancmange Tartlets
Ingredients: 1 pint of milk; 3 oz. of ground rice; 1 teaspoon of sugar; a few drops of almond essence; any kind of jam preferred

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 ↓

Blancmange Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the blancmange

Combine the milk, ground rice, and sugar in a saucepan to make a blancmange.
Add a few drops of almond essence for flavor.

Fill and bake

Grease patty pans and fill them with the blancmange mixture.
Top each tartlet with a spoonful of your preferred jam.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

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.

Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,456 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 thickens into the blancmange custard.
Ground rice: Thickens the milk and helps the mixture set into a firm, sliceable custard.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to the blancmange.