Name: Rice Cakes
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 2 cups milk; 3 eggs; a little flour; butter for greasing; nutmeg for serving; fine sugar for serving

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

Prepare the batter

Boil the rice until very soft and mash it finely.
Add the milk and eggs, then stir in a little flour.

Cook and serve

Butter a griddle and pour small amounts of the batter to form cakes.
Serve with a sprinkle of nutmeg and fine sugar.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Rice: Softened and mashed rice gives the cakes their body and tender, starchy base.
Eggs: Eggs bind the batter and help the cakes set as they cook.
Milk: Milk loosens the mashed rice into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Flour: A little flour helps the batter hold its shape on the griddle.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Turmericfits less well
Capersfits less well

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