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Dessert

Rice Flummery

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with rice flour, lemon peel, cinnamon, and peach water or bitter almond.

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 Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 pint of fresh milk with a piece of lemon peel and a stick of cinnamon in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix a little cold milk with enough rice flour to form a thick paste.

  3. Sweeten the mixture and add 1 tablespoon of peach water or a crushed bitter almond.

Thicken and set

  1. Pour the rice flour mixture into the boiling milk, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Once thickened, pour into a mold or pint basin, removing the spices.

  3. Let it cool, then turn the flummery out onto a dish.

Serve

  1. 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the soft, set flummery.
Rice flour
Thickens the hot milk into a paste-like body that sets as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour of the milk and flavourings.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour into the boiling milk. Rice flour settles and scorches on the bottom of a hot pan if not stirred constantly. Scorching gives a burnt taste, and uneven mixing leaves lumps, so the thickening stays patchy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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