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Dessert

Rice Meringue

A baked dish of cooked rice layered with peach preserve and topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Steam the rice until tender.

  3. In a bowl, combine the cooked rice, milk, and salt.

Assemble

  1. Butter a baking dish and layer rice, then peach preserve, repeating until the dish is full.

  2. Smooth the top layer.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then gradually stir in the sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the rice mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until the meringue is a handsome brown.

  2. Serve warm, not hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  4. Rice + peachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets into the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the base, giving body and a soft, tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the rice mixture as it bakes.
Peach preserve
Adds sweetness, fruity flavour and moisture between the rice layers.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy, then gradually stir in the sugar. Sugar added gradually to whipped egg whites helps build a stable foam that holds its volume, so the meringue bakes up light rather than collapsing into the rice.

Swap the peach

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

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

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