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Dessert

Rice Custards Without Cream

A custard made from rice flour, milk, egg yolks, ratafia, and sugar, cooked until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Custards Without Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the rice flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, bring the remaining milk to a boil.

Make the custard

  1. Stir the rice mixture and egg yolks into the boiling milk.

  2. Add ratafia and sugar to taste, stirring continuously until thickened.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rice flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard body without cream.
Egg yolks
Set into the hot milk to thicken and enrich the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickeners set into a custard.
Ratafia
Adds almond-like aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring continuously until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle and scramble if the custard overheats or sits still on the heat. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the mixture thickens 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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