Skip to main content
Dessert

Ground-Rice Cake Glazed with Apricot or Other Jam

A baked cake made from eggs, sugar, butter, ground rice, maraschino, glazed with apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ground-Rice Cake Glazed with Apricot or Other Jam

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a sharp oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a lined saucepan, whip the eggs and sugar over low heat for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the butter in small pieces and ground rice, stirring lightly until well mixed.

  3. Remove from heat just before boiling.

Bake and glaze

  1. Butter a 3-inch high fluted cylinder mold and dust with flour.

  2. Pour the cake mixture into the mold and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Once cooked, turn the cake out of the mold and glaze with hot apricot jam reduced with syrup.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  3. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Whipped to trap air and set the cake's structure as it cooks.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Ground rice
Gives the cake a fine, light texture and body.
Apricot jam
Forms a sweet, glossy glaze on the finished cake.

The step that matters

Remove from heat just before boiling. Overheating whipped egg and sugar mixtures can scramble the eggs and cause them to lose their airy structure, leading to a dense cake.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesApricot Ice CreamApricot Ice Cream26 recipes