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Dessert

Ground Rice Souffle

A baked souffle made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ground Rice Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix ground rice with milk or cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add butter, sugar, salt, lemon rind, and cinnamon.

  3. Stir over heat until the milk boils, then pour into a basin.

  4. Let it cool, then add beaten egg yolks.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a plain mold and tie a buttered paper band around it, higher than the mold.

Finish and bake

  1. Whisk egg whites to a firm froth and fold into the mixture.

  2. Beat the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately after baking.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as its starch swells on heating, giving the base body.
Milk or cream
Provides the liquid that steams in the oven and keeps the texture moist and tender.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and, as they set, help give the baked soufflé its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped firm but folded gently so the trapped air is not lost. Baking straight away matters because the risen soufflé soon falls as its steam escapes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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