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Dessert

Rice Mould

Rice Mould is a chilled rice custard molded with milk, cream, eggs, and isinglass, served with stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in 1 pint of milk, sweetened and flavored to taste, until tender.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the rice to a basin to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard with the remaining milk and the egg yolks.

  2. When the rice is cold, mix it with the custard.

Set and serve

  1. Whip the cream with a pinch of sugar until stiff, then gently fold it into the rice and custard mixture.

  2. Dissolve a pinch of isinglass in a small amount of water and stir it into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until very cold.

  4. To serve, turn out the mold and accompany with stewed fruit.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Rice
Starch that swells as it cooks in milk, giving the mould its body and soft bite.
Milk
Cooks the rice and, with the egg yolks, forms the custard that gives the mould its richness.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, helping bind the rice and cream into a creamy mass.
Cream
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, adding lightness, moisture and richness.
Isinglass
A gelatin-like setting agent that firms the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.

The step that matters

Cooling the rice before mixing it with the custard. Adding warm rice to the custard can scramble the egg yolks and loosen the mixture, so the rice should be fully cold first, as the record directs.

“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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