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Dessert

Rice Pie

Rice Pie is a baked dessert made with milk, rice flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pie

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 custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the rice flour with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Add the rice flour mixture to the boiling milk and stir well.

  4. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  5. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract and mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Rice flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the filling body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling structure and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture.

The step that matters

Stir the rice flour into the boiling milk. Rice flour clumps if it is added dry or unevenly, so it should be blended smooth in cold milk first and stirred well into the boil so it thickens evenly.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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