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Dessert

Rice and Cream

A sweet dessert of boiled rice mixed with cream, sherry, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 and Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until tender, then drain it in a sieve and let it cool.

Combine and sweeten

  1. Whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  2. Mix the whipped cream with the cooled rice.

  3. Add the sherry and sweeten to taste with caster sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Rice + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it simmers in milk and gives the dish its body and bulk.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice, leaving it soft and moist.
Cream
Fat that traps air when whipped, giving a light, creamy texture.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a rich, wine-like flavour.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool before mixing it with the cream. Warm rice would melt the fat foam of the whipped cream, causing it to deflate and turn loose and runny instead of light and airy.

“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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