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Dessert

Rice Custard

A sweet custard made with milk, cream, ground rice, bitter almonds, rose water, and egg yolks.

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 ↓

Rice Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk and cream.

  2. Add the ground rice and blanched almonds, then stir in the rose water and sweeten with loaf sugar.

  3. Heat the mixture until it nearly boils.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Return to low heat and simmer for about 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish or serve in cups, sprinkling sifted loaf sugar on top.

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk and cream as it heats, giving the custard body.
Egg yolks
Set gently with heat to thicken and enrich the custard.
Milk and cream
Form the liquid base, adding moisture and richness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Adding them after removing the pan from heat, then returning to low heat, lets them thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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