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Dessert

Ground Rice Blanc Mange

A sweet dessert made from ground rice, milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, fruit syrup, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ground Rice Blanc Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine the ground rice, milk, cinnamon, and lemon peel in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring well, until it thickens.

  3. Remove the cinnamon and lemon peel.

Set and serve

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

  2. Once set, turn it out of the mold and serve with fruit syrup, cream, and 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 boils, giving the pudding body and a sliceable set.
New milk
Provides the liquid that the rice starch swells in, and the richness of the pudding.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that flavour the milk while it simmers.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the milk as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture, stirring well, until it thickens. Ground rice starch only thickens fully when it boils, and stirring keeps it from scorching on the bottom of the pot. Undercooked starch will not set firmly once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cinnamon, syrup, cream, 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.

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