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Dessert

Fifty Lunches

Fried rice cakes coated in ratafias and dusted with sifted sugar, served with apricot syrup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Simmer rice in milk for 1 hour over low heat.

  2. Remove the pan and let the rice cool until it absorbs most of the milk.

  3. Mix in 2 whole eggs.

  4. Spread the mixture onto a dish to a thickness of 1.5 inches.

  5. Once cold and firm, cut into pieces 1 inch wide and 1.5 inches long.

Coat and fry

  1. On a pastry board, spread crumbled ratafias.

  2. Roll the rice pieces in the ratafias to coat them.

  3. Dip each piece in beaten egg.

  4. Coat each piece with more ratafias.

  5. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  6. Drain the fried pieces on a wire rack over brown paper.

Finish and serve

  1. Dust liberally with sifted sugar.

  2. Serve with hot apricot syrup sauce.

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. Syrup + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Apricot + rumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Simmered in milk, it forms the starchy body that sets into a firm cake when cooled.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, giving it moisture and a creamy texture.
Eggs
Bind the cooled rice mixture and add structure so the pieces hold their shape.
Ratafias
Crumbed coating that gives the fried pieces a crisp, browned crust.
Oil
Frying medium that browns the coating and cooks the outside quickly.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool until firm before cutting. The rice must absorb most of the milk and cool fully so it sets firm. Cutting it warm or loose makes the pieces crumble or lose their shape in the coating and hot oil.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

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