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Dessert

Rice Souffle

A baked rice soufflé flavored with orange and sweetened with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Cook the rice in boiling water with salt until tender, then drain.

  2. Combine the rice, milk, and cream in a double boiler.

  3. Cook the mixture for 20 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the powdered sugar.

  2. Add the beaten yolks to the rice mixture.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat and let it cool.

  4. Stir in the grated orange peel and orange juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pudding dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately with a light, delicate sauce.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whites are whipped to lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Rice
Provides body and a tender, starchy structure that holds the soufflé together.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the rice base, helping it cook into a creamy mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, more tender texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the base and dissolves easily into the beaten yolks.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently. Whites hold air only while whipped; overmixing deflates them, so the soufflé loses lift and rises poorly in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cream, egg, sugar, 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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