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Dessert

Yokohama Rice Cakes

A baked rice cake made with rice, milk, eggs, vanilla, cream, salt, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 ↓

Yokohama Rice Cakes

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 the rice

  1. Wash and drain the rice.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan, add salt and rice, and let it boil for 45 minutes, stirring lightly occasionally.

  2. Remove from heat, add cream, one whole egg, and the yolk of the second egg, well beaten, and stir until combined.

Bake

  1. Line a pie plate with puff pastry, pour in the rice mixture, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 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. Vanilla + milktop 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. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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
Forms the thick body of the filling as it simmers and absorbs the milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice cooks in, becoming a creamy custard base.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, smoother texture.
Puff paste
Forms a flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice in milk. Rice must cook gently and be stirred lightly so the milk does not scorch on the bottom of the pan and the starch thickens evenly. Boiling too hard or too long can leave the filling thick and uneven before it ever reaches the oven.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cream, egg):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cream, egg. 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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