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Dessert

Rice Buns

Rice buns are sweet buns made from finely-ground rice, sugar, butter, flour, milk, and egg powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the finely-ground rice, powdered sugar, flour, and egg powder.

  2. Soften the butter and rub it into the mixture until well combined.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the milk and stir until smooth.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into well-greased small patty pans, filling them not too full.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Finely-ground rice
Forms the main structure of the buns.
Powdered white sugar
Provides sweetness and a fine, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Milk
Moistens the dry mixture so it combines into a smooth batter.
Bird's concentrated egg powder
Binds the mixture and adds egg richness in place of fresh eggs.

The step that matters

Filling the patty pans. Overfilling lets the batter spread and rise over the edges, while the golden browning needs room for heat to reach the centre evenly. Filling them not too full helps the buns bake evenly and keep their shape.

“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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