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Chinese Stir Fried Sticky Rice Cakes

Step by step photos for authentic Shanghainese Chinese Fried Sticky Rice Cake (Nian Gao) Recipe.

By steamykitchen · From Open Recipes · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and bamboo shoots work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 46 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 6
Prep15 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, soy (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By steamykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Rice + bamboo shootstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mushroom + porktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Rice + porktop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rice + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar, rice wine, pork):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, mushroom, sauce, pepper, sugar, rice wine, pork. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).