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Dessert

Rock Cream

A rice dessert topped with currant jelly and frothy egg white cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in new milk until quite soft.

  2. Sweeten the rice with powdered sugar.

  3. Transfer the rice to a dish and top with lumps of currant jelly or preserves.

Make the topping and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Add flavoring and thick cream to the egg whites.

  3. Drop the mixture over the rice to form a 'rock' of cream.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Cooks in milk to a soft, thick base that holds the topping.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they give the light, airy structure of the rock.
New milk
Softens the rice as it boils, giving the base a creamy texture.
Powdered loaf sugar
Dissolves easily into the rice, sweetening the base.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture to the beaten whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks; under-beaten whites collapse and fail to hold the rock shape, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, egg, cream, 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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