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Rice Caudle

A sweet, spiced rice dish cooked with water, milk, brandy, and cinnamon, served with thin toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Rice Caudle

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rice Caudle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil.

  2. Mix ½ cup ground rice with a little cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture into the boiling water.

  4. Cook until the mixture reaches a proper consistency.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon peel, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, and ⅓ cup brandy.

  6. Boil until smooth.

Prepare the soaked rice

  1. Soak 2 tablespoons Carolina rice in water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the soaked rice.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the soaked rice with 1 pint of milk.

  4. Simmer until the mixture can be pulped through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the pulp and milk back to the saucepan with 1 bruised clove and 1-2 tablespoons white sugar.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Add more milk if the mixture is too thick.

  4. Serve with thin toast.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, spoonable porridge as it cooks.
Carolina rice
Breaks down when simmered and pulped, adding body and a creamy texture.
Milk
Adds richness and moisture, softening the mixture into a creamy consistency.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth to the flavour of the caudle.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture reaches a proper consistency. Ground rice thickens as its starch gelatinises in hot liquid, and it keeps thickening as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking makes it stiff and pasty, so check the texture by eye before moving on.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, milk, clove. 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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