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Dessert

Rice Meringue

A baked dish of cooked rice topped with a meringue of beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Soak the rice in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Combine the soaked rice and milk in a pot.

  3. Boil until the rice is cooked.

  4. Beat the egg yolks with 3 tablespoons of sugar and a little milk while the rice is boiling.

Prepare the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites with the remaining sugar.

  2. Add lemon juice to the egg whites to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the rice mixture in a dish.

  2. Top the rice with the beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Softens as it cooks in milk, forming the thick, starchy body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to make a creamy base that carries the sweetness and flavour.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the custard, while whites whip into a foam that sets and forms the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Egg white foam sets and browns quickly in the oven, so watching the topping closely prevents it from over-browning, drying out or turning tough.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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