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Dessert

Rice Blancmange

A sweet rice dessert made by simmering rice with milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Blancmange

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in a small quantity of water until it absorbs the water and is ready to burst.

Make the milk base

  1. Simmer the milk with the cinnamon and lemon peel.

  2. Strain the milk mixture.

  3. Sweeten the strained milk with sugar.

  4. Add the cream to the milk mixture.

  5. Stir the rice into the milk mixture.

  6. Simmer, stirring continuously until it becomes a mash.

Mold and serve

  1. Dip a mold in cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Turn it out of the mold to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 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

Whole rice
Softens and thickens as it simmers, giving the blancmange its body and mashed texture.
Milk
Forms the main liquid base, carrying the flavour and setting into a soft, creamy dessert.
Very rich cream
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel and a gentler, silkier texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the mild dairy and spice flavours.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice mixture until it becomes a mash. Stirring continuously keeps the starch and milk from catching on the base of the pan and scorching. Cooking until thick lets the rice break down so the dessert sets smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cinnamon, 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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