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Dessert

Rice Cakes

A baked cake made with ground rice, eggs, powdered sugar, lemon peel, and optional caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 270 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the eggs, using half the whites.

  2. Whip the egg whites for 10 minutes until stiff.

  3. In a bowl, combine ground rice, powdered sugar, and grated lemon peel.

  4. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently.

  5. Butter a baking tin and pour in the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, which helps the cakes rise and set into a light structure.
Ground rice
Provides the main body and a tender, slightly grainy crumb.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves finely into the batter.
Lemon peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. The whites hold air that makes the cakes light. Stirring vigorously knocks out that air, which leads to dense, flat cakes. Use a light, sweeping motion until just combined.

Swap the caraway

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, rice, sugar, lemon. 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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