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Dessert

Rice Cream

A gelatin-based dessert made with cooked rice, milk, sugar, and flavored with bitter almond or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Cream

Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice until tender, then drain off the water.

Make the cream

  1. Pour the rice into scalding milk and add the sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and add the gelatin that has been soaked in cold water until soft.

  3. Once the gelatin has dissolved, strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Beat the strained mixture for 3 minutes.

  5. Flavor the mixture with the essence and set aside until cold.

Finish and chill

  1. Whip in the sweet cream, pour into a mold, and set on ice until ready to serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the body and starch that give the cream its thick, creamy texture.
Gelatin
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled in a mold.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the milk and essence.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks into, giving a rich, smooth body.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, making the finished dessert softer and more velvety.

The step that matters

Dissolving and straining the gelatin. Gelatin must fully dissolve into the hot mixture, or it will leave soft lumps and set unevenly. Straining through a fine sieve removes any undissolved bits and rice grains, giving a smooth, uniformly set cream.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar, milk, cream):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Peanutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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