Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Cakes

A sweet cake made with eggs, rice flour, sugar, butter, and almonds or lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Weigh the eggs and use the same weight of sifted rice flour and powdered sugar.

  2. Beat the butter to a cream and whisk the eggs in a separate bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Add the sugar to the eggs and beat for 20 minutes.

  2. Mix in the butter and rice flour, along with the almonds or lemon peel, and beat for another 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Butter small tins, fill them halfway, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift through whisked air and protein that set in the oven.
Rice flour
Gives the cakes their body and structure once heated.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it blend smoothly into the eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, contributing fat and flavour to the crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar into the eggs for 20 minutes. Long beating dissolves the sugar and traps air in the eggs, which gives the cakes their light rise. Under-beating leaves a dense, heavy crumb.

“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.

More rice cakes recipes

Boston 3Fried 3 See all 144 →

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes