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Rice Caudle

A warm porridge made from rice, milk, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Rice Caudle

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rice Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Mix grated rice with a little cold water and pour it into the boiling water.

  3. Cook until it reaches a proper consistency.

  4. Add sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy, then boil until smooth.

  5. Soak Carolina rice in water for one hour, then strain it.

Make the milk pulp

  1. Add two tablespoons of the soaked rice to the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer until the mixture can be pushed through a sieve.

  3. Combine the pulp and milk in the saucepan with a bruised clove and a bit of sugar.

  4. Simmer for ten minutes, adding more milk if too thick.

Serve

  1. Serve with thin toast.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Grated rice
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the caudle its body.
Carolina rice
Softens after soaking and is pushed through a sieve, giving a smooth pulp that thickens the milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and dilutes the mixture to the desired consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the brandy and lemon.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the liquid as it boils.

The step that matters

Pushing the soaked rice through a sieve. Rice must be soft enough to pass through the sieve. If it is undercooked or not soaked long enough, the pulp stays grainy and the texture turns out lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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