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Dessert

Pink Cream

A pink custard made from ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, vanilla, and cochineal, served over strawberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Pink Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the ground rice in the milk.

  2. Add butter, sugar, and vanilla extract.

  3. Stir for 20 minutes after it boils until it becomes a smooth custard.

  4. Color the custard pink with cochineal.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread strawberry jam over a glass dish.

  2. Pour the cooled custard over the jam and set aside to cool.

  3. If desired, scatter desiccated coconut over the top.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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 as it cooks, giving the custard its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the ground rice thickens into custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the custard.
Strawberry jam
Provides a sweet, fruity layer beneath the custard.

The step that matters

Stir for 20 minutes after it boils. Ground rice thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid while being stirred. Constant stirring prevents scorching on the base and lumps, so the custard becomes smooth rather than grainy or stuck to the pan.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, butter, sugar, vanilla, strawberry jam):

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, butter, sugar, vanilla, strawberry jam. 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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