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Rice Paste for Tartlets, Etc

A paste made from ground rice, water, salt, egg, butter, and sugar, used for tartlet dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Paste for Tartlets, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice paste

  1. Boil the ground rice in water until absorbed.

  2. Squeeze the rice in a napkin until dry.

  3. Pound the rice in a mortar with salt, beaten egg, and fresh butter until it forms a paste.

Roll the paste

  1. Roll the paste out very thin.

  2. Dust with flour while rolling.

  3. Optionally spread more butter on top.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ground rice
Forms the body of the paste, setting into a firm, sliceable base once cooked and shaped.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, helping the paste roll and hold together.
Large egg
Binds the pounded rice into a cohesive paste and adds structure and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a little browning when the paste is baked.

The step that matters

Squeeze the rice until dry. Excess water left in the boiled rice dilutes the paste, making it sticky and hard to roll thin, and can leave the baked crust soggy.

“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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