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Dessert

Rice Cake

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, rice flour, all-purpose flour, and optional butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rice Cake

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Weigh the eggs in their shells and use the same weight for sugar and butter.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Sift in the rice flour and all-purpose flour, mixing gently.

  3. If using, melt the butter and fold it into the mixture.

  4. Add any desired flavoring before baking.

  5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whisked with sugar to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the beaten eggs hold a stable, fluffy foam.
Rice flour
Adds a tender, delicate crumb and a slightly different texture from wheat flour.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten-forming structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness, fat and a tender texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. The air whipped into the eggs and sugar is the main source of rise in this sponge-style cake. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while over-beating can collapse the foam, so beat until pale and thick, then fold the flours in gently to keep the air.

“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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