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Dessert

Rice Cake with Butter

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, all-purpose 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

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the 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 all-purpose flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a round cake pan 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

Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, helping the cake set and hold its rise.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when creamed, helps trap air for a lighter texture.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main gluten structure that gives the cake its body.
Rice flour
Contributes a finer, more delicate crumb because it has little gluten.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs three at a time while stirring continuously. Eggs added too quickly can fail to emulsify into the butter and sugar, causing a curdled or greasy batter that bakes unevenly. Adding them gradually and stirring keeps the batter smooth and able to hold air.

“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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