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Rice Caudle

A warm porridge made from grated rice simmered in milk, sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon peel, cinnamon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Caudle

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 Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the grated rice in water for an hour and strain it.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of rice to 1¼ quarts of milk.

  3. Simmer until the mixture can be pulped through a sieve.

Finish and serve

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

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. If too thick, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of milk.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Grated rice
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, pulpable porridge as it cooks.
Milk
Liquid base that cooks with the rice to form the creamy body of the caudle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the mild, starchy porridge.

The step that matters

Pulping the simmered rice through a sieve. If the rice is not cooked until very soft, it will not pass smoothly through a sieve and the texture will be grainy. Starch gelatinises as it cooks, so the rice must be fully tender before pulping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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