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Dessert

Rich Cakes

A cake made from boiled rice, milk, eggs, flour, and butter, served with nutmeg and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Rich Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the rice until very soft, then mash it finely.

  2. Add the milk and eggs to the mashed rice and stir in a little flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small brown pans (the size of muffin rings) with butter.

  2. Pour the batter into the pans and bake until golden.

  3. Serve with a sprinkle of nutmeg and fine 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Rice
Softened and mashed to form the body of the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set as it bakes.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until very soft, then mash it finely. Rice that is not cooked soft enough or mashed fine will leave lumps and a grainy texture in the batter, so the cakes will not bake up smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, egg, flour, butter, 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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