Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Custard

A custard made from milk, rice, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 custard

  1. Scald the rice with hot water, then add it to 1 quart of milk.

  2. Boil in a frying kettle until the rice is soft.

  3. Add salt and vanilla to the rice while boiling.

  4. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 4 tablespoons of sugar and add to the mixture just before removing from heat.

  5. Stir thoroughly without boiling again.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar until stiff.

  2. Pour the custard into a serving dish, spread the beaten egg whites on top, and brown slightly in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + ricetop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice cooks in and the custard sets from.
Rice
Softens as it cooks and thickens the mixture, giving the custard its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff foam, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the egg yolks blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Add the yolks just before removing from heat, then do not boil again. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the custard boils after they go in, the yolks can curdle and leave the texture grainy and lumpy.

“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.

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes