Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Flummeky

A sweet rice pudding made with ground rice, milk, lime zest, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Flummeky

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Mix the ground rice with a little of the milk.

Cook

  1. Boil the remaining milk in a pot.

  2. Stir the rice mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Continue boiling for a few minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold or basin and let it cool completely.

  2. Serve with custard or cream poured over it.

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 + limetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  5. Milk + limetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together700 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Ground rice
Its starch thickens the hot milk and sets the flummery as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a soft, creamy set.
Lime zest
Its citrus oils add a bright aroma to the milky base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the plain milk and rice.

The step that matters

Stir the rice mixture into the boiling milk. Ground rice must be smoothly mixed in first with a little cold milk, then added to boiling milk while stirring. Adding it unmixed or to cold milk causes lumps, and the starch only thickens properly once it has been heated in the liquid.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe 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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipes