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Dessert

Bice-pie

A custard pie made with rice, milk, eggs, nutmeg, sugar, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bice-pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. In a pot, bring 1 quart of water to a boil and add ½ cup of rice.

  2. Cook until the rice is soft.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in 1 quart of cold milk, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 5 eggs (whites and yolks beaten separately).

  5. Add 1 teaspoon of nutmeg.

  6. Add sugar to taste.

  7. Optionally, pulp the rice through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. If using cold boiled rice, heat it in the milk, using 1 cup of rice to 1½ cups of milk.

  2. Mix in 3 tablespoons of sugar beaten with the yolks of 2 eggs.

  3. Fold in the frothed egg whites.

  4. Slightly brown the under crust.

  5. Fill the crust with the mixture.

  6. Bake.

Alternative method

  1. In 1 quart of boiling milk, add ½ cup of rice flour mixed with a little cold milk and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the yolks of 5 eggs.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

  4. Fold in the frothed egg whites.

  5. Bake in one crust.

  6. Top with a meringue made from 3 egg whites.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens into the body of the pudding, giving it a thick, creamy structure.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the filling structure and richness; whites add lightness when folded in.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the custard sets from.
Rice flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth base that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg yolks stay smooth when beaten in.

The step that matters

Fold in the frothed egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to a froth and folded in gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving a dense filling instead of a light one.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, nutmeg, sugar, flour, butter):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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