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Dessert

Rice Foam

A light, airy foam made from cooked rice, milk, cream, and egg white, served with wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Foam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Wash the rice and cook it in milk until tender.

  2. Mash the cooked rice through a sieve and add salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the cream until scalding, then stir in the rice mixture.

  2. Whip the egg white to stiff peaks and fold it into the mixture immediately after removing from heat.

  3. Add chopped parsley if desired and serve with wafers.

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

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

  2. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it traps air and gives the foam its light, airy structure.
Rice
Cooked and mashed until smooth, it thickens the milk and gives the foam body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the foam a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Milk
Cooks with the rice, softening it and forming the liquid base of the mixture.

The step that matters

Folding the egg white. Egg white foams trap air only when whipped to stiff peaks and folded in gently. Folding it in right after removing the pan from heat keeps the mixture warm enough to stay light, but too much stirring knocks out the air and deflates the foam.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

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