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Dessert

Almond Rice

A sweet rice dish cooked in milk with almonds, citron, and sugar, set in a mold and served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until soft.

  2. Pass the rice through a sieve.

  3. Return the rice to the heat.

  4. Add sugar, pounded almonds, and citron.

  5. Simmer for a short time.

Set and serve

  1. Let it cool.

  2. Place the mixture in a mold.

  3. Let it firm up.

  4. Turn out the rice and garnish with blanched almonds.

  5. Pour custard over it.

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 + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Provides the bulk of the pudding, and its starch thickens as it cooks and sets once cooled.
Milk
Cooks the rice and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and almonds.
Pounded sweet almonds
Add nutty aroma and flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Passing the rice through a sieve. Rice that is soft but not sieved stays grainy and uneven. Pressing it through a sieve breaks the grains down into a smooth, cohesive mass that sets evenly in the mold.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Peanutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, 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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