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Dessert

Rice Cream

Rice Cream is a sweet dessert made from cooked rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Rice Cream

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 ↓

Rice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Cook the rice in 3 cups of milk until soft.

  2. Add 2 cups of milk, beaten egg yolks, and 4 tablespoons of sugar to the rice.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pour it into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add 4 tablespoons of sugar and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and return it to the oven until 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.

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

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Cooks down in milk to form the soft, creamy body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture as they set with heat, giving the pudding a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable when whipped.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks; under-whipped whites will weep and deflate in the oven. Adding sugar after they foam helps them stay stable and glossy when browned.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, egg, sugar. 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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