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Dessert

Bice Meringue

A rice pudding topped with a meringue layer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bice Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding base

  1. Put rice and milk into a saucepan and boil slowly until rice is soft.

  2. Remove from heat and let rice cool.

  3. Stir in lemon rind, egg yolks, and crushed loaf sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer mixture to a buttered dish and cover with whipped egg whites.

  2. Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for about 10 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body of the pudding as it softens and thickens in the milk.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give a creamy, moist base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard base, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the meringue topping that browns and sets in the oven.
Crushed loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stable.

The step that matters

Bake the meringue gently. Whipped egg whites set and brown quickly in heat, and a hot oven can overcook the custard beneath before the topping is done. A slow oven sets both layers evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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