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Dessert

A Souffle of Whole Rice

A sweet rice souffle made with milk, rice, cinnamon, lemon peel, butter, sugar, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

A Souffle of Whole Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the case

  1. Line a mold with thin tart paste and place bread inside to hold it in place; bake until firm.

Make the rice base

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, rice, cinnamon, and lemon peel; boil gently until rice is tender, stirring occasionally.

  2. Remove from heat, add butter, sugar, and brandy; mix well and let cool.

  3. Remove lemon peel and cinnamon from the rice mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Whisk egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gently fold in the whisked egg whites into the rice mixture.

  3. Fill the mold half or three-quarters full, sift sugar over the top, and bake.

  4. Serve immediately after removing from the oven to prevent sinking.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whisked and folded in, they trap air and make the soufflé rise and turn light.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice base and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Rice
Cooked in milk until tender, it thickens the base and gives the soufflé its body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a creamy base that carries the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whisked into the egg whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, cinnamon, butter, sugar, brandy, 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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