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Rice Cup Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cup Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs for ten minutes.

  2. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat again.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and lemon juice until crumbly.

  4. Fold the egg white mixture into the yolk mixture.

  5. Gently fold in the ground rice and sifted flour.

  6. Pour the batter into gem irons or patty pans.

  7. If desired, add a little ground caraway.

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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + carawaytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Rice + carawaytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, rice, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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