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Dessert

Rice Cake Pudding

A baked cake made from rice flour, sugar, eggs, preserves, and custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Rice Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the cake

  1. In a bowl, mix the rice flour and sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and combine until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased cake pan and bake until set.

Assemble

  1. Once cooled, cut the cake into slices.

  2. Layer preserves between the slices.

  3. Pour rich custard over the assembled cake.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 flour
Forms the main structure of the cake's crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a firm, tender structure when baked.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown lightly at the surface.
Preserves
Add fruity sweetness and moisture between the cake layers.
Rich custard
Adds a creamy, moist topping that softens the cake's surface.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-thickened batter wet and collapsed in the middle, while overbaking dries the rice flour cake and makes it crumbly. Bake until the centre springs back and is firm, so the slices hold together when cut.

“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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