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Rice Souffle

A soufflé made from Carolina rice cooked in milk, flavoured with cinnamon, lemon peel and brandy, enriched with butter and folded with whipped egg whites before baking in a pastry-lined mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a mold with tart paste.

  3. Place a piece of bread inside the mold to prevent it from collapsing.

  4. Bake until done and let cool.

  5. Blanch the rice in cold water.

  6. Bring the rice to a boil.

  7. Drain the rice and wash it in two or three waters.

Make the rice base

  1. Combine the rice with 3 pints of new milk in a pot.

  2. Bring the rice and milk to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

  3. Boil ½ pint of milk with cinnamon and lemon peel to infuse flavor.

  4. Strain the infused milk into the rice.

  5. Once the rice is cooked, add ¼ pound of butter.

  6. Add enough sifted sugar to sweeten.

  7. Add 1 glass of brandy.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold the egg whites into the rice mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold and sift a little sugar on top.

  4. Bake for about 15 minutes until set.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that thickens the milk into a creamy base as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff foam, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the rice base.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy body of the soufflé.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lightly browns on the surface.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the rice mixture. Stiff whites hold air that makes the soufflé rise; overmixing or deflating them during folding leaves a dense result that will not puff.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, brandy, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, brandy, egg, cinnamon. 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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