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Dessert

Rice Jelly

Rice jelly is a sweet dessert made from rice flour, water, sugar, lemon extract, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Rice Jelly

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Mix rice flour with cold water.

  2. Stir mixture into boiling water with sugar.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Stir in lemon extract and mold the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar.

  2. If the patient has fever, flavor cream with lemon; if diarrhea, flavor with brandy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 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 flour
Thickens the boiling water into a soft, set jelly as its starch swells and cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, plain flavor of the jelly.
Cream
Adds richness and fat to the served jelly, softening its clean, light taste.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Rice starch must be fully cooked and gelatinized to thicken properly; stopping early or letting it stick and scorch leaves a raw, pasty, or burnt-tasting jelly that will not set well.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, sugar, cream, brandy):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, sugar, cream, brandy. 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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