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Dessert

Rock Cream

A dessert of rice cooked in sweet milk, topped with jelly and a stiff egg white cream.

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

Rock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in sweet milk until soft.

  2. Add the sugar and pour into a dish.

  3. Place lumps of jelly on top.

Make the topping

  1. Beat the egg whites and powdered sugar to a stiff froth.

  2. Flavor to taste and add the cream.

  3. Drop the mixture on the rice.

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

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Softened by boiling in milk, it forms the soft base of the dish.
Sweet milk
Cooks the rice until tender and adds moisture and richness to the base.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they give the topping its light, airy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the beaten egg whites and helps them hold a stable foam.
Jelly
Softens and melts slightly over the warm base, adding sweetness and fruity flavor.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks. Under-beaten whites collapse, and over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy, so the topping loses its airy texture.

“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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