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Dessert

Rice Pancakes

A sweet dish of rice batter pancakes fried in lard, served with sugar and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rice Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat 2 cups of new milk in a saucepan until scalding hot.

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of ground rice with ½ cup of cold milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the rice mixture into the hot milk and let it thicken without boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and cool, then gently mix in ¼ pound of butter.

  5. Once cool, add ¼ cup of white sugar, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg, 4 beaten eggs, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the pancakes in a small amount of lard until light brown.

  2. Sift sugar over the pancakes, roll them into a round shape, and serve with lemon slices.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the hot milk into a soft, stable batter that holds the pancake together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Butter
Adds fat and a tender, rich texture to the batter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens.
White sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the pancakes brown when fried.

The step that matters

Stir the rice mixture into the hot milk and let it thicken without boiling. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid. Boiling can scorch the milk and break the batter's texture, so it should be heated gently until it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, butter, sugar, nutmeg, 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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