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Dessert

Rice Cups

Rice Cups are a sweet rice pudding served in individual cups, topped with jam or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and raspberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 155 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Sweeten the milk with pounded sugar and boil with the cinnamon stick.

  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 tea cups dipped in cold water and let cool.

Serve

  1. Turn out the rice cups when cold and pour custard made with the egg yolks around them.

  2. Top with red currant jelly or raspberry jam.

  3. Serve warm or cold with raspberry cream or custard if desired.

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. Red currant + raspberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 pudding as it cooks.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add lightness and help the pudding hold its shape.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard poured around the rice cups, adding richness and smooth body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens into the pudding.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the milk and balances the flavour of the pudding and custard.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites off the heat. Stirring the whites in gently over low heat, rather than letting them boil, keeps them from scrambling or deflating, so the pudding stays light and tender.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cinnamon, rice, egg, red currant):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Blueberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

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