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Dessert

Rock Cream

A sweet rice pudding mixed with jelly, egg whites, powdered sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil rice in sweet milk until soft.

  2. Add sugar and salt, then pour into a dish.

  3. Place lumps of jelly on top.

Make the topping

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

  2. Flavor to taste.

  3. Add cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Cooks soft in milk to form the body of the pudding.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they set light and airy over the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the beaten egg whites, sweetening the meringue topping.
Jelly
Softens and adds sweetness and fruity flavor beneath the topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites hold air only when beaten enough to form stiff peaks. Underbeaten whites collapse, leaving a dense, flat topping instead of a light, airy one.

“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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