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Dessert

Arroce Doce

A Portuguese dessert of rice simmered in milk with sugar, almonds and cinnamon, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon 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 ↓

Arroce Doce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the rice with a dry cloth and pick out any impurities.

Cook the pudding

  1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and boil until the rice is dry and tender.

  3. Stir in the pounded almonds just before it's done.

Serve

  1. Transfer the rice to shallow dishes and smooth the surface.

  2. Dust with powdered cinnamon and serve cold.

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

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

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that softens in milk and thickens into the creamy body of the pudding.
Whole milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and, with its milk solids, gives a rich, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the finished pudding its soft, set body.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil until the rice is dry and tender. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and starch thickens as it cooks. Stopping too early leaves the pudding loose and grainy, while overcooking makes it stiff and dry as it cools.

“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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