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Dessert

Rice Custards

A custard made with milk, sugar, cinnamon, ground rice, egg whites and yolks, topped with currant jelly or raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and rice 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 ↓

Rice Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice custards

  1. Sweeten the milk with loaf sugar and boil it with the stick of cinnamon.

  2. Stir in the sifted ground rice until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg whites, stirring over low heat for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into cups that have been soaked in cold water without wiping them.

  5. Once cold, turn them out onto a serving dish.

Finish with custard

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks with a little more than 1 pint of milk to make the custard.

  2. Pour the custard around the rice custards and top with red currant jelly or raspberry jam.

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. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a firm, sliceable set custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the rice mixture set when gently heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard sauce, giving it body and a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Forms the base of both the rice custards and the custard sauce.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the flavour of the set custard.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites off the heat. Stirring the whites over low heat for only 2-3 minutes gently sets them into the thickened mixture. Too much heat can curdle or toughen the eggs, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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