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Dessert

Caramel Rice

Rice cooked in milk and eggs, served over caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the loaf sugar and water and boil until the mixture turns a golden toffee color.

  2. Pour the caramel into a perfectly dry souffle mold or basin, coating it all over, and let it set.

Make the rice custard

  1. In another saucepan, combine the rice and milk and simmer gently for about one hour until the rice is tender.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the castor sugar and beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the rice mixture into the mold over the set caramel.

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Loaf sugar
Melts and caramelizes to form the golden toffee coating on the mold.
Rice
Forms the body of the dessert, softening as it simmers in milk.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base.
Eggs
Set when cooked, giving the rice custard structure and firmness.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the rice custard and adds to its smooth texture.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to a golden toffee color. Sugar darkens quickly near the end of caramelization, so it can turn bitter or burnt if left too long. Removing it at the right golden stage gives a sweet, clean-tasting caramel that coats the mold evenly.

“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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