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Dessert

Rice Cake, with Almonds

A baked rice cake flavored with butter, sugar, almonds, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Cake, with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

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. Heat gently on a slow stove until the milk is absorbed and the rice is cooked, adding more milk if necessary.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks and whipped egg whites once the rice is done.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Pour in the rice mixture and bake for about 1.5 hours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked slowly in milk, it forms the body and soft, creamy structure of the cake.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it as the cake sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped air lightens the mixture and helps the cake rise and become tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and flavour.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the cake's texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix in the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring too vigorously deflates them, leaving a dense cake that rises poorly in the oven.

“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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