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Dessert

Rice Custard

A baked rice custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Custard

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.

Make the rice custard

  1. In a pot, combine the rice, milk, and salt. Steam for 1 hour or until the rice is soft.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar. Stir this mixture into the rice just before removing it from heat, ensuring it does not boil again.

  3. Add vanilla to the rice mixture and stir thoroughly.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with additional sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into a pudding dish and spread the beaten egg whites on top.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the top is slightly browned.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 the milk, giving the custard its body and bulk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks with the rice and sets into the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard, adding richness and smoothness.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the rice. If the hot rice mixture boils after the yolks go in, the eggs can scramble and the custard turns grainy. Stirring the yolks in just before removing the pot from heat, and not letting it boil again, keeps it smooth.

“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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