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Baking

Little Rice Cakes

A small cake made from egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, ground rice, flavored with orange flower or rose water, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Little 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. Whisk the egg yolks and egg whites until well combined.

  2. Beat in the sugar using a horn spoon.

  3. Add the ground rice and orange‑flower water (or rose water or lemon peel).

Bake

  1. Stir in the melted butter just before pouring into the tins.

  2. Dust the pans with flour or rub them with butter.

  3. Fill the pans 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter, giving the cakes a tender, custardy crumb.
Egg whites
Add lightness and structure as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the cakes' surface.
Ground rice
Forms the body of the cakes, giving a fine, slightly crumbly texture.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter just before pouring into the tins. Melted butter can start to firm up as it cools, and a batter left standing lets the ground rice settle. Adding the butter last and filling the tins promptly keeps the batter evenly mixed and the cakes moist.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, rice, butter, flour. 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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