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Dessert

Rice Custard

A custard made from milk, cream, ground rice, blanched almonds, rose water, and egg yolks, sweetened with loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the milk, cream, ground rice, blanched almonds, and rose water in a saucepan.

  2. Sweeten with loaf sugar and stir until it nearly boils.

  3. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and stir.

  4. Let it simmer for about 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish or serve in cups, and sprinkle sifted loaf sugar on top.

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 and cream into a soft, spoonable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Set into the warm liquid, giving the custard richness and a smooth, thick texture.
Cream
Adds fat, making the custard richer and smoother in mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the main liquid base that the rice and yolks thicken.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if the mixture boils hard. Stirring well and keeping the heat gentle, as the simmer step asks, helps them set smoothly.

“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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