Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Custard

Rice custard is a sweet dish made with milk, cream, ground rice, almonds, rose water, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk, cream, ground rice, pounded almonds, and rose water.

  2. Sweeten with loaf sugar and stir until it nearly boils.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir well.

  4. Let it simmer for about a minute.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish or serve in cups, and sprinkle sifted loaf sugar 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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a soft, creamy custard.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Ground rice
Thickens the custard as it heats, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the custard, adding richness and smoothness.
Bitter almonds
Contribute a distinct nutty, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot when they go in. Stir well and keep the heat gentle so the custard thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

“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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes