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Dessert

Rock Cream

A rice pudding topped with preserved fruit and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in new milk until soft.

  2. Sweeten the rice and pile it on a dish.

  3. Place lumps of preserved fruit on top of the rice.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth with a little sugar.

  2. Flavor the egg whites with vanilla.

  3. Optionally, add Acadia baking powder for extra fluffiness.

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
Cooked in milk until soft, it forms the creamy base of the pudding.
New milk
Cooks with the rice to create the pudding's creamy, tender body.
Egg whites
Beaten to a stiff froth, they give the topping a light, airy structure.
Acadia baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, adding extra lift and fluffiness to the egg whites.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks, because trapped air bubbles stabilize the foam and give the topping its light, airy volume. Underbeaten whites stay runny and collapse.

“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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