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Boiled Rice Dumplings, Custard Sauce

Boiled rice dumplings served with a custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Dumplings, Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumplings

  1. Boil the rice until tender, then drain and mash it moderately fine.

  2. Mix in the butter, sugar, mixed spice, salt, and egg yolks.

  3. Moisten the mixture with 1 to 2 tablespoons of cream.

  4. With floured hands, shape the mixture into balls and tie them in floured pudding cloths.

  5. Steam or boil the dumplings for 40 minutes.

Make the custard sauce

  1. For the custard sauce, mix the sugar and slightly warmed butter.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and cream together, then combine with the sugar and butter mixture.

  3. Pour the sauce into a double saucepan set in hot water and whisk for 3 minutes.

  4. Transfer the saucepan to cold water and whisk until the sauce cools.

Serve

  1. Serve the dumplings with the custard 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dumplings, giving them a soft, starchy body once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing a smooth, tender texture to both dumplings and sauce.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and, in the sauce, thicken it into a smooth custard as they gently set.
Sugar
Sweetens the dumplings and sauce and adds body to the custard.
Cream
Moistens the dumpling mixture and enriches the custard sauce with extra fat and smoothness.

The step that matters

Whisking the custard over hot water. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat; if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Using a double saucepan and then cooling it helps keep the custard smooth.

“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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