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Dessert

Rice Cake, with Butter

A baked cake made from butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and rice flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cake, with Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Melt the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the pounded sugar and stir until light.

  3. Break in the eggs three at a time, stirring continuously.

  4. Once the eggs are incorporated, add the rice flour and regular flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hoop like a plum cake.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Beaten into the butter, it sweetens and helps trap air for a light texture.
Eggs
Added gradually, they emulsify the batter and provide structure as it sets.
Rice flour
Adds a fine, slightly crisp texture and lightens the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Breaking in the eggs three at a time. Adding eggs gradually while stirring continuously lets each batch emulsify fully into the butter and sugar. Adding them all at once can cause curdling and a heavy, dense cake.

“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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