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Dessert

Rice Flummery

A sweet, thickened milk dessert made with ground rice, lemon rind, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice 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 Flummery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the lemon rind in the milk.

  2. Strain the milk to remove the lemon rind.

  3. Moisten the ground rice with cold milk.

  4. Add the moistened rice and sugar to the strained milk.

Cook

  1. Stir until it boils and is smooth.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Once cold, turn out the flummery.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the flummery its creamy body and richness.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks and helps the mixture set firm when cold.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the flummery and balances the flavour of the lemon.
Lemon rind
Infuses the milk with aromatic citrus oils that scent the whole dessert.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils and is smooth. Ground rice thickens by starch that can settle, clump or scorch on the base of the pan. Constant stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed, so the mixture thickens smoothly and sets with an even texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, 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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