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Ground Rice Milk

A warm milk substitute made by boiling milk with ground rice, sweetened and flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ground Rice Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Thicken the milk

  1. Set a pint of milk on the fire and bring it to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub 2 teaspoons of ground rice smoothly with a little milk.

  3. Add the ground rice mixture to the boiling milk and stir well.

Finish and serve

  1. Sweeten to taste and grate in some nutmeg.

  2. Serve warm.

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

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 and, with the rice, gives the drink its body.
Ground rice
Its starch swells when heated in the milk, thickening the drink and giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk.

The step that matters

Adding the ground rice mixture to the boiling milk and stirring well. Rice starch thickens only when heated in liquid and can clump if added unevenly. Stirring disperses the paste through the hot milk so it thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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