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Dessert

Rock Cream

A dessert of soft rice cooked in milk, sweetened, topped with jelly or preserved fruit, and finished with a whipped egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until very soft.

  2. Sweeten with powdered sugar and pile onto a dish.

Top and finish

  1. When cold, top with jelly or preserved fruit.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding a little sugar and flavoring.

  3. Pour the egg white mixture over the rice.

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).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Softens in milk and thickens as its starch absorbs liquid, giving the dish its body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to provide moisture and a creamy base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and form a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Underbeaten whites stay runny and sink into the rice, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy. Stop when the peaks stand upright and hold their shape.

“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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