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Dessert

Rice Custards

A custard made with milk, rice, eggs, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the bay leaves, cinnamon, and lemon peel in the milk.

  2. Rub the ground rice into a little cold milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and gradually mix with the boiled milk, straining it.

  4. Place the mixture over low heat in a saucepan and stir gently until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour into a dish, stir in the brandy, and let it cool.

  2. Top with whipped cream or serve in glass cups.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard and carries the flavours.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with gentle heat, giving the custard body.
Egg yolks
Set with gentle heat to thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and smoothness.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour to the finished custard.

The step that matters

Stir gently over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or turn grainy if heated too quickly or stirred vigorously. Low, gentle heat lets the yolks and ground rice thicken the milk smoothly, so the custard sets evenly without scrambling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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