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Dessert

Rice Rocks

Rice Rocks are sweet baked cookies made with ground rice, butter, sugar, eggs, and sultanas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Rocks

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the baking soda.

  2. Add the butter and sugar, and cream them together until smooth.

  3. Stir in the ground rice, sultanas, and peel.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and cream of tartar.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.

  6. Add milk as needed to form a stiff dough.

Bake

  1. Shape the dough into small rocks and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Bind the dough and add structure and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown in the oven.
Ground rice
Provides the bulk of the dough and a slightly crisp, short texture.
Flour
Gives the dough body and structure once combined with the wet ingredients.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough and helps the leavening react with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk should be added only as needed to reach a stiff dough. Too much liquid makes the rocks spread and lose their shape, while too little leaves the dough crumbly and hard to 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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