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Dessert

Rice Pie

Rice Pie is a baked dish made with ground rice, milk, sugar, eggs, flavoring, and optional Madeira, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a basin, mix 3 tablespoons of ground rice with 1 pint of cold milk to form a paste.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 4 beaten eggs, and your preferred flavoring.

  3. Pour 1 pint of boiling milk over the mixture and stir over heat until the eggs set.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then add 1 glass of Madeira if desired.

Bake

  1. Line a pie dish with pastry, pour in the mixture, and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 45 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the filling a creamy, sliceable body.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the filling structure and a custard-like texture.
Milk
Forms the main liquid base and adds richness and softness to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until the eggs set. Eggs thicken when heated but can scramble if the heat is too high or stirring stops. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the filling smooth and evenly set.

“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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