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Creamed Rice

Creamed Rice is a thickened rice dish cooked in milk with lemon rind, nutmeg or laurel leaf, sweetened, and served with cream or jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Creamed Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the rice in the milk until very thick and tender.

  2. Add the lemon rind and nutmeg or laurel leaf halfway through cooking.

  3. Sweeten to taste and pour into molds.

  4. Once cold, turn out and serve with thick cream or custard, or surround with jam or preserved fruits.

  5. Prepare the day before if serving for dinner.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells in the milk and thickens as it cooks, giving the dish its body and tender texture.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a thick, creamy base that sets as it cools.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic flavour that lightens the richness of the milk and rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish to taste.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until very thick and tender. Rice must cook long enough in the milk for its starch to release and soften fully. Undercooked rice stays firm and will not set into a smooth, sliceable mold.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, nutmeg, sugar, cream. 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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