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Dessert

Rice Cups

Rice cups are a custard made from milk, rice flour, butter, and salt, set in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Rice Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix the rice flour with some cold milk until smooth.

  3. Once the milk boils, stir in the rice flour mixture and let it boil for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the butter and a little salt while the mixture is warm.

Set and serve

  1. Rinse your custard cups with cold water.

  2. Half fill the cups with the mixture and let it cool to set.

  3. Once cold, turn out the rice cups to serve.

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. 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 flour
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the custard a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard and provides moisture and creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel and flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice flour mixture for 20 minutes. Rice flour starch must be fully cooked in boiling liquid to thicken properly and lose its raw, floury taste. Stirring the mixture in while the milk is boiling helps prevent lumps from forming.

“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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