Skip to main content
Breakfast

Rice Cakes

Rice cakes are fried pancakes made from soft boiled rice, eggs, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine soft boiled rice, egg yolks, flour, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the rice mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat a buttered griddle over medium heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the griddle.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the cakes a light, airy lift.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the rice and flour into a cohesive batter.
Soft boiled rice
Forms the body of the cakes and provides their tender, moist texture.
Flour
Adds structure so the cakes hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stirring beaten egg whites vigorously deflates the foam they hold, so the cakes turn dense. Folding gently keeps the air trapped, which keeps the cakes light.

“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 cakes recipes

Boston 3Fried 3 See all 144 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes