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Dessert

Rice Flummery

A sweet milk-based dessert thickened with rice flour and flavored with lemon peel, cinnamon, and peach water or almond.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Boil the new milk with lemon peel and cinnamon.

Thicken and flavour

  1. Mix rice flour with a little cold milk until it reaches a good consistency.

  2. Sweeten the mixture and add the peach water or beaten almond.

  3. Boil carefully to avoid burning.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a shape or pint basin, removing the spices.

  2. Once cold, turn the flummery onto a dish and serve with cream, milk, or custard.

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 + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the flummery its body and its ability to set when cold.
New milk
Forms the base of the dish, providing the liquid that the rice flour thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the flummery, balancing the flavour of the milk and spices.
Peach water or bitter almond
Adds a strong aromatic flavour that defines the dish's character.

The step that matters

Boil carefully to avoid burning. Milk contains sugars and proteins that scorch on the bottom of a pan when overheated, and the rice flour thickened mixture can stick and catch easily. Stirring gently and keeping the heat low prevents a burnt taste from spreading through the whole dish.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, rice, flour, sugar, peach. 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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