Skip to main content
Dessert

Eice Custard

A custard made with rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Eice Custard

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 custard

  1. Combine rice, milk, and salt in a pot.

  2. Steam the mixture for 1 hour or until the rice is soft.

  3. Beat egg yolks with sugar in a bowl.

  4. Add the yolk mixture to the rice just before removing it from heat.

  5. Stir the mixture thoroughly, but do not let it boil again.

  6. Add vanilla extract to taste.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into a pudding dish and top with the beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the top is slightly browned.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Cooks into soft grains that thicken the milk and give the custard its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a creamy, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the rice softens in and the custard is built on.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Add the yolk mixture to the rice just before removing it from heat. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle if they boil. Stirring them in off the heat and not letting the mixture boil again keeps 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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes