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Dessert

Rice Flummery

A sweet milk and rice dessert thickened with bitter almonds and rose water, garnished with sweet almonds and served with cream and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the ground rice and pounded bitter almonds mixed with rose water.

  3. Sweeten to taste and stir until very thick, revealing the bottom of the saucepan.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool completely.

  2. Once cooled, turn it out onto a serving plate.

  3. Garnish with sweet almonds cut into straws.

  4. Serve with thick cream and a mixture of white wine and sugar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 and sets into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a smooth pudding.
Bitter almonds
Adds a distinct nutty, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its body as it thickens.

The step that matters

Stir until very thick. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells and gelatinises in hot liquid. Stopping too early leaves the mixture too loose to hold its shape in the mold, while overcooking can make it stiff and gluey.

“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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