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Preserve

Rice Cakes

A batter of flour, milk, butter, eggs, and boiled rice cooked on a griddle into golden brown cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add the boiled rice, salt, half of the milk, melted butter, and flour; mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the remaining milk.

  4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold them into the batter.

Cook

  1. Cook the batter on a griddle until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites lighten it so the cakes rise and stay tender.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the cakes their body and structure.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter, adding moisture and softness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb, and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and a soft, moist texture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or deflating them while folding makes the cakes dense instead of light.

“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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