Name: Rice Snow Balls
Ingredients: 1 pint rice; 2 quarts water; 1 teaspoon salt; 3 egg yolks; 1 pint milk; 1 teaspoon corn starch; lemon flavoring

Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Boil the rice in water with salt until soft.
Fill small cups with the rice and let them cool completely.
Turn the rice out onto a dish.

Make and serve

In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, milk, corn starch, and lemon flavoring to make a soft custard.
Pour the custard over the rice 30 minutes before serving.

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.

Rice + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together933 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the bulk of the dessert and holds its shape when packed into cups.
Egg yolks: Thicken the custard and give it a rich, smooth texture.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Corn starch: Thickens the custard so it stays soft but holds together on the rice.