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Rice Balls, with Custard

Rice balls made from cooked rice and milk, served with jelly and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Balls, with Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice well and soak it for 1 hour in enough water to cover it.

  2. Pour off the water, add the milk, and cook in a double boiler for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the salt and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Shape and serve

  1. Dip small custard cups in cold water, fill them with the cooked rice, and let them cool.

  2. At serving time, turn the rice mounds out onto a flat dish, add a bit of jelly on each, and pour soft custard around them.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the starchy body of the rice balls, which sets firm as it cooks and cools.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture, richness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice slowly in a double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat lets the rice absorb the milk evenly and soften without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Stirring in the salt late keeps the rice from toughening early in cooking.

“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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