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Dessert

Rice Cake

A baked cake made from ground rice, flour, sugar, eggs, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Cake

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Whisk both well and add the butter, beaten to a cream, to the yolks.

  3. Stir in the flour, ground rice, and lemon (finely minced if using rind).

  4. Beat the mixture well, then add the egg whites.

  5. Beat the cake mixture again for a while.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered mold or tin.

  2. Bake for nearly 1½ hours.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Whites trapped by beating add lift, and yolks enrich the batter and help it set.
Butter
Creamed butter adds richness and a tender, fine crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Ground rice
Gives a light, slightly crumbly texture and helps the cake stay tender.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust as it bakes.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and beating again. Egg whites hold air only if they are beaten and folded in gently after the other ingredients. Overbeating after they go in can knock out that air, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, sugar, egg, butter. 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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Almond 6Caraway 4Lemon 3with Almonds 3 See all 171 →

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