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Dessert

Ground Rice Blanc-mange

A sweet custard made from ground rice, milk, sugar, butter, and flavored with lemon rind or vanilla.

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

Ground Rice Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the blanc-mange

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

  2. Boil the rest of the milk, then pour it over the rice while stirring continuously.

  3. Add the sugar and butter, and boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Stir in the vanilla or grated lemon rind.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold that has been drained but not dried.

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 as it cooks, giving the blanc-mange its body and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice starch thickens into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and adds flavour to the set mixture.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives a softer, richer mouthfeel to the finished dessert.

The step that matters

Stirring while the rice thickens. Ground rice starch can settle and scorch on the base of the pan or form lumps if it is not stirred constantly while the milk heats and thickens. Lumps and scorching spoil the smooth texture of the set dessert.

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.

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