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Rice Cakes

A fried rice pancake made with boiled rice, milk, egg yolks, flour, and butter.

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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the soft boiled rice, milk, egg yolks, flour, and salt.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold them into the rice mixture.

Cook

  1. Heat a buttered griddle over medium heat.

  2. Spoon the mixture onto the griddle and fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Soft boiled rice
Provides the bulk and body of the cakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the surfaces brown golden.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten egg whites trap air that makes the cakes light. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and leave the cakes dense.

“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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