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Dessert

Rice Bavarian

A sweet rice pudding made with milk, lemon zest, sugar, gelatin, maraschino or sherry, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice 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 Bavarian

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with lemon zest until boiling.

  2. Stir in the rice and salt; cook until the rice is tender and the milk is nearly evaporated.

  3. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 1 hour, then melt it in hot water.

Set and serve

  1. Once the rice mixture is partly cold, mix in the sugar and melted gelatin.

  2. Add the maraschino or sherry for flavor.

  3. When the mixture begins to set, gently fold in the whipped cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  5. Serve alone or with orange jelly, orange compote, or cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooks down in the milk to thicken the pudding and give it a creamy body.
Gelatine
Sets the pudding so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Whipped cream
Adds air and richness, giving a lighter, softer texture to the set pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavor of the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and becomes the custard body.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream at the right moment. If the mixture is too warm, the cream deflates and melts; if it has set too far, the cream won't blend in evenly. Folding gently as it begins to set keeps the cream airy and evenly distributed.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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