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To Make Rice Milk

A sweetened milk made by boiling rice with water, cinnamon, milk, egg, flour, and optional currants and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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To Make Rice Milk

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Rice Milk

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the rice in water with a pinch of cinnamon until the water is mostly evaporated, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Add the milk and beaten egg to the rice, along with the flour, and stir continuously until it boils.

  3. Remove from heat and sweeten to taste.

  4. Optionally, add currants and nutmeg.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 drink as it cooks down and softens in the liquid.
Milk
Provides the creamy base and most of the liquid in the finished drink.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the mixture as it heats.
Flour
Helps thicken the liquid so it has more body and resists separating.

The step that matters

Stirring after adding the milk and egg. Once the milk and beaten egg go in, constant stirring keeps the egg from scorching or curdling on the bottom of the pan and helps the flour thicken the mixture evenly.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cinnamon, milk, egg, flour, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon, milk, egg, flour, sugar, nutmeg. 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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