Skip to main content
Dessert

Ground Rice Cake

A baked cake made with eggs, flour, ground rice, sugar, baking powder, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Ground Rice Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease two cake tins with lard, then dust with the sugar and flour mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Whip the eggs and sugar together for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and ground rice to the egg mixture.

  3. Add baking powder to the ground rice, then mix into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and bake until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whipped to trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides structure as its proteins set during baking.
Ground rice
Adds a tender, slightly crumbly texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the batter rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Whip the eggs and sugar together for 20 minutes. The whisked eggs and sugar form the foam that gives the cake its rise. Under-whisking leaves a dense cake, while the foam must be combined gently with the flour so it does not deflate.

“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 cake recipes

Almond 6Caraway 4Lemon 3with Almonds 3 See all 171 →

You might also like

Rice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesRice PuddingRice Pudding22 recipesLemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipes