Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Blanc-mange

Rice Blanc-Mange is a sweet dessert made from ground rice, milk, sugar, butter, and flavorings, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the ground rice with about ½ cup of the milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. Combine the remaining milk, sugar, butter, and chosen flavouring in a saucepan.

  3. For laurel-flavored blanc-mange, steep 3 laurel leaves in the milk. Remove the leaves before adding the rice.

Cook

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Stir in the rice batter.

  3. Let it boil for about 10 minutes, stirring well until it pulls away from the sides of the saucepan.

Set and serve

  1. Grease a mold with salad oil.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the mold.

  3. Let it set completely.

  4. Once set, turn it out easily.

  5. Garnish with jam or a fruit compote.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the milk and sets the blanc-mange into a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice starch swells in and gels as it cooks and cools.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds body to the set texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel to the finished set dessert.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice batter into the boiling milk. Ground rice starch can clump or scorch on the base of the pan if not stirred constantly. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides so the texture is smooth and even.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes