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Dessert

Rice Custard

A custard dessert made with rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Custard

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.

Make the rice custard

  1. Steam the rice with milk and salt for 1 hour or until soft.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and add to the rice mixture just before removing from heat; stir well but do not boil.

  3. Add vanilla extract to the mixture.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding sugar to taste.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into a pudding dish and top with the beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the top is slightly browned.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 into the base, giving the custard its body and thickness.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the creamy custard base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set gently with the rice.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped egg whites hold their stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. If the yolk mixture boils, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy custard. Stirring them in off the heat and not boiling keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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