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Dessert

Rice Blanc-mange

A sweet, spiced rice pudding made with milk or cream, spices, lemon peel, and sugar, set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Put the rice in the least water possible until it almost bursts.

  2. Add the milk or cream and boil until it becomes a mash, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Flavor with spices and lemon peel, and sweeten with pounded sugar added with the milk.

Mold and serve

  1. Remove the lemon peel before pouring into molds.

  2. Dip a mold in cold water without drying it, then fill it with the rice mixture.

  3. Let it stand until completely cold, then turn it out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Whole rice
Its starch thickens as it cooks, giving the mash body and a firm set once cold.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and creaminess, and helps the mash turn smooth and tender as it cooks.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and spices.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mash boils. Milk sugars and rice starch scorch easily on the base of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the mash smooth rather than burnt or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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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