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Dessert

Rice Cake with Fruit

A sweet cake made from rice cooked in milk, sweetened with sugar and vanilla, topped with preserved fruits and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Rice Cake with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a deep cake tin with fresh butter.

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until soft and thick.

  2. Stir in sugar and vanilla, then let it cool.

Layer and finish

  1. Spread spoonfuls of the rice mixture onto the pan in the tin.

  2. Layer with preserved fruits, draining excess juice.

  3. Add a few pieces of fresh butter 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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Vanilla + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together334 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together608 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk until soft and thick, it forms the set, creamy base of the cake.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give a soft, creamy body and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the milk and butter.
Preserved fruits
Add concentrated fruit flavour, sweetness and colour between the rice layers.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth mouthfeel to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk until soft and thick. Rice must cook long enough to soften fully while the milk thickens. Undercooked rice stays firm and grainy, and the layers will not hold together when set and sliced.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, vanilla, apricot, pear, apple):

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, vanilla, apricot, pear, apple. 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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