Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Cakes

A baked cake made with egg yolks, egg whites, powdered sugar, lemon peel, and ground rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites to a foam.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and grated lemon peel, then stir in the ground rice.

  3. Beat the mixture together for half an hour.

  4. Pour the batter into a buttered tin.

Bake

  1. Bake 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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Beaten to a foam, they trap air that lifts the cake as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and dissolves easily into the beaten eggs.
Ground rice
Provides the body of the cake, giving it a tender, close crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs to a foam. Beaten egg whites hold air bubbles that lift the batter in the oven. Under-beaten eggs produce a dense cake, while over-beaten whites can collapse and lose their lift before baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice cake recipes

Almond 6Caraway 4Lemon 3with Almonds 3 See all 171 →

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes