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Baking

Rice Flour Cake

A cake made with rice flour, riced boiled potatoes, milk, fat, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla, and optional chocolate or spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Flour Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the fat, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, baking powder, riced boiled potatoes, rice flour, and vanilla in the order given, and mix until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into muffin molds or layer cake tins.

  2. For chocolate cake, add 2 squares of melted chocolate to the batter.

  3. For spice cake, add 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon spice.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 flour
Forms the main structure of the crumb, since it contains no gluten to build a network.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter while setting during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Riced boiled potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the crumb, helping it stay tender.
Fat
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and limiting toughness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a soft, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter until well combined. Batter must be evenly blended so the leavening spreads through it; uneven mixing can leave dense spots or pockets of baking powder that cause uneven rising.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, rice, flour, vanilla. 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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