Skip to main content
Dessert

Little Rice Cakes

A small cake made from egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, ground rice, water or lemon peel, and butter, baked in a pan.

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

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Little Rice Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Whisk the egg yolks and egg whites well.

  2. Beat in the finely-pounded sugar with a horn spoon.

  3. Add the ground rice and orange-flower or rose water, or lemon peel.

Fill and bake

  1. Stir in the melted butter just before filling the tins.

  2. Dust patty-pans with flour or rub with butter.

  3. Fill the pans halfway and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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 yolks and whites
Provide structure and lift, setting the batter as it bakes.
Ground rice
Gives the cakes their body and a fine, tender crumb.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten eggs hold their volume.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, tenderising the crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter just before filling the tins. Once the butter is added, the batter should be baked promptly, because the beaten egg foam slowly loses its air if it stands. Delay weakens the rise and leaves denser cakes.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rice, lemon, butter, flour. 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.

More rice cakes recipes

Boston 3Fried 3 See all 144 →

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes