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Dessert

Rice-cream Blanc-mange

A custard dessert made from rice, cream, Madeira wine, and sugar, chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice-cream Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Pick over and wash the rice well.

  2. Put the rice into a double boiler and add enough milk to absorb.

  3. Boil until the rice is thoroughly cooked.

  4. Pulp the rice through a fine wire sieve and set aside to cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, add the cream and whisk until frothy.

  2. Stir in the wine and sugar.

  3. Serve very cold.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + madeira winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Carolina rice
Cooked and pulped to form the thick, smooth body of the blancmange.
Thick, sweet cream
Adds richness and a silky texture, and whisking it lightly aerates it.
Madeira wine
Adds aroma and a rounded, fortified sweetness-and-depth flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and cream.

The step that matters

Pulp the rice through a fine sieve after it is fully cooked. Rice that is not thoroughly cooked stays grainy and will not pass smoothly through the sieve. Cooking the grains until soft lets starch swell and break down, giving the smooth, set texture the dessert depends on.

“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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