Risalamande

The story

Risalamande, cold rice pudding folded with almonds and whipped cream and topped with warm cherry sauce, came into being only around 1900, in the homes of the Danish bourgeoisie, as a more sophisticated, French-inspired replacement for the plainer warm rice porridge that had been eaten on Christmas Eve until then. One whole blanched almond is hidden in the dessert, a tradition that goes back to a 16th-century French custom tied to the “king of Epiphany”: a cake concealing a single bean, whose finder became “king” for the evening. In Denmark, whoever gets the almond wins the “mandelgave,” a prize that is most often a little pink marzipan pig. Many finders tactically hide their catch for hours so the rest of the company keeps eating dessert to the last spoonful, a small, friendly form of family manipulation repeated every year. For Danish American families, risalamande is one of the easiest dessert recipes to hand down to children precisely because of that game; the child hunting for the almond is almost always the most engaged person at the table.