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Rice Flummery

Rice flummery is a thickened rice pudding made with ground rice, milk, lemon peel, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the flummery

  1. Boil the ground rice slowly in the new milk.

  2. Add lemon peel and chopped almonds.

  3. Stir continuously while cooking until it thickens.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it stand overnight.

  2. Serve with cream and preserve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Starch that swells in hot milk and thickens the mixture into a soft, set custard.
New milk
Liquid base that cooks with the rice into a creamy, smooth body.
Bitter almonds
Adds a distinctive nutty, slightly bitter aroma to the flummery.
Lemon peel
Adds fragrant citrus oils that brighten the flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Stir continuously while cooking until it thickens. Rice starch swells as it heats and can scorch or clump on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly, giving a smooth, uniformly thickened texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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