Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Flummery a LA Creme

A sweet rice dessert made with ground rice, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Flummery a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flummery

  1. Soak the ground rice in water and strain it.

  2. Mix the strained rice with butter and sugar.

  3. Pour in the boiling milk and stir well.

  4. Transfer the mixture into a wet mold and let it swell and cool.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix eggs with sugar, some milk, and flour.

  2. Boil the egg mixture briefly until combined, then pour it around the rice flummery.

  3. Ensure the sauce is not too thick.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ground rice
Forms the body of the flummery as its starch swells and sets when cooled.
Eggs
Thicken the cream sauce as the proteins set when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the flummery.
Sugar
Sweetens both the flummery and the sauce.
Milk
Provides liquid that swells the rice and forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce alongside the eggs.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if it boils hard or too long. Heat it gently and stir, then check that it is not too thick, as the record advises.

“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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes