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Dessert

Red Rice

A fruit pudding made from red currants and raspberries thickened with cornflour or ground rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Red Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Stew the red currants gently in 1 quart of water until the juice flows freely.

  2. Add the raspberries just before the currants are ready.

  3. Strain the juice and measure it, then sweeten to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Add cornflour or ground rice in the same quantity as for a blancmange.

  2. Pour the mixture into a damp mold.

  3. Once cold, turn it onto a glass dish and serve with cream, if desired.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Red currant + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Red currants
Provide the main tart flavor and color of the juice.
Raspberries
Add fruity aroma and sweetness to the juice.
Cornflour or ground rice
Thickens the juice so it sets firm when cold.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour or ground rice. Starch must be fully mixed in and heated so the grains swell and gelatinize; otherwise the pudding stays thin or turns lumpy and fails to set firmly when cold.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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