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Dessert

Rice Blanc Mange

A sweet milk pudding made with ground rice, lemon rind, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix ground rice and a pinch of salt with cold milk.

  2. Stir this mixture into 1 quart of boiling milk.

  3. Rub the lemon rind with a lump of sugar to flavor it.

  4. Sweeten the mixture with the flavored sugar.

Cook and set

  1. Boil while stirring constantly for 8 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

  4. Return to heat and stir constantly until boiling hot.

  5. Pour into molds and let harden.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a creamy pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped whites add lightness and help the pudding set with a softer texture.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavor the sugar and the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and carries the lemon flavor from the rind.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites should be cooled slightly before folding so they do not scramble or deflate. Gentle folding keeps air in the mixture, and the final reheating sets the eggs without curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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