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Dessert

Spanish Rice Cream

A chilled dessert made from cream, rice flour, sugar, egg whites, cinnamon, almond flavor, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Spanish Rice Cream

six cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Boil the cream with the piece of cinnamon.

  2. Pour the cream into a basin.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Strain the cooled cream.

  5. In a pan, combine the strained cream, rice flour, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

  6. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  7. Add almond flavor to the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Wet six cups with a little rose water.

  2. Pour the cream mixture into the cups.

  3. Refrigerate the cups until cold.

  4. Turn out the cream onto a dish before serving.

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 + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body once thickened and chilled.
Fine rice flour
Thickens the mixture as it boils, giving the cream a firm, sliceable set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the mixture set and hold its shape when cooled.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Rice flour must be fully cooked in the hot liquid to swell and gelatinize. Undercooking leaves a raw, pasty taste and a weak set, while the egg whites can curdle if overheated too fast.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, rice, flour, sugar, egg, almond, rose):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, rice, flour, sugar, egg, almond, rose. 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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