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Boiled Bice Dumplings, Custabd Sauce

Rice dumplings steamed or boiled, served with a custard sauce made from sugar, butter, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Bice Dumplings, Custabd Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dumplings

  1. Boil the rice until tender, then drain and mash it moderately fine.

  2. Mix in the butter, sugar, mixed ground spice, salt, and egg yolks.

  3. Moisten the mixture with 1-2 tablespoons of cream.

  4. Shape the mixture into balls with floured hands and tie them in floured pudding cloths.

  5. Steam or boil the dumplings for 40 minutes.

Make the custard sauce

  1. For the custard sauce, mix the sugar and slightly warmed butter.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and cream together, then combine with the sugar and butter mixture.

  3. Pour the sauce into a double saucepan set in hot water and whisk for 3 minutes.

  4. Cool the saucepan in cold water while whisking until the sauce is cooled.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the bulk of the dumpling and, once mashed, gives it a soft, cohesive body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the dumpling and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the dumplings and the custard sauce.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and, in the sauce, thicken it as they gently cook.
Cream
Moistens the dumpling mixture and adds richness to the custard sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the custard sauce over hot water. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat; if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Keeping it in a double saucepan and whisking constantly lets the yolks set into a smooth custard.

“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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