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Dessert

Rice Blancmange

Rice Blancmange is a custard dessert made with milk, eggs, ground rice, brandy, nutmeg, and sugar, served with cream and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rice Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blancmange

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and beaten eggs.

  2. Stir in the ground rice, brandy, and nutmeg.

  3. Sweeten to taste and bring to a boil.

  4. Once near cold, pour the mixture into a mold.

  5. When completely cool, unmold the blancmange.

Serve

  1. Serve with a mixture of sugar, cream, and nutmeg around it.

  2. Garnish with red currant jelly.

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + red curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

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 the rice thickens into a set custard.
Eggs
Add richness and help the mixture set as it cools.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the blancmange its body and set.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the set dessert.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil. Ground rice starch must be heated fully to swell and thicken. Stirring constantly while the mixture comes to a boil prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, and the thickened starch sets as it cools.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, rice, brandy, nutmeg, sugar, 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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