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Dessert

Hot Rice Cake

A baked rice cake made with rice, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, almonds, and orange-water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hot Rice Cake

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. Boil the rice in milk until thick, then let it cool.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Add the egg yolks, cooled rice, flavor of orange-water, powdered sugar, powdered almonds, and salt to the butter. Mix well.

  4. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a deep stewpan and coat the inside with grated bread.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

  3. Invert the pan onto a plate to serve hot.

  4. Optionally, dust with sugar and cinnamon or serve with almond cream 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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk and cooled, it forms the thick, tender body of the cake.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and give the cake a light, risen texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a custard-like crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown on the surface as it bakes.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a thick base and adds moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites are whipped to hold air, which lifts the batter. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, sugar, almond, bread. 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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