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Rice Hedgehog

A custard-like rice pudding flavored with nutmeg, lemon zest, almonds, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Hedgehog

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Pour milk into a saucepan and flavor with grated nutmeg and lemon zest.

  2. Wash the rice and simmer it in the milk until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Stir in sugar and salt, then transfer to a basin and let it cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cool, add cream, custard, chopped cherries, and almonds.

  2. Pile the mixture into a glass dish and top with more cherries.

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pudding as it softens and absorbs the milk.
Custard
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the pudding.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, softer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and nutmeg.
Almonds
Add a toasted-nut crunch and nutty flavor against the soft pudding.
Crystallized cherries
Add chewy sweetness and fruity flavor to the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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