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Dessert

Rice Cake, with Almonds

A baked rice cake flavored with almonds and served with apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Cake, with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with butter, sugar, bitter almonds, pounded sweet almonds, milk, and salt.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil on a slow stove until the rice absorbs the milk.

  3. If the rice is not done, add a little more milk and continue boiling until cooked.

  4. Mix in the yolks of six eggs and the whipped whites of three eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a mold with butter and sprinkle shredded almonds inside.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the mold and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  3. Once done, turn the cake out onto a dish and pour diluted apricot jam around the base before serving.

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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs the milk and gives the cake its body and soft, set crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture as it sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped foam adds air and lightness, helping the cake rise and stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a delicate texture to the cake.
Milk
Liquid that the rice absorbs, cooking it soft and creating a creamy base.

The step that matters

Adding the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that expands in the oven. Folding them in gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air from deflating and leaving the cake dense.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, almond, milk, egg. 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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