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
In a bowl, combine the soft boiled rice, milk, egg yolks, flour, and salt.
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and gently fold them into the rice mixture.
Cook
Heat a buttered griddle over medium heat.
Spoon the mixture onto the griddle and fry until golden brown on both sides.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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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