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Dessert

Rice Cakes

A sweet cake made from egg yolks, sugar, ground rice, lemon rind, and orange water or brandy, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of 15 eggs for about 30 minutes with a whisk.

  2. Add 10 ounces of sifted loaf sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate ½ pound of ground rice, orange water or brandy, and grated lemon rinds.

  4. Fold in the beaten whites of 7 eggs and stir for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a hoop and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provide richness and fat, and help bind the batter into a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, which lifts the cakes as they bake.
Ground rice
Gives body and a light, slightly grainy texture as the batter sets.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cakes and adds structure as the batter bakes and sets.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if they were beaten to a stable foam and folded in gently. Overmixing knocks out the air, so the cakes bake up dense instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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