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Dessert

Rice Cheesecakes

A baked cheesecake made with cooked rice, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, almonds, lemon rind, and glace cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Cheesecakes

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. Cook the rice in the milk until creamy.

  2. Add butter, sugar, almonds, lemon rind, and egg yolks to the rice mixture.

  3. Stir in the whisked egg whites until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty tins with flaky pastry and fill with the mixture.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped glace cherries and bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk until creamy, it thickens the filling and gives it a soft, custard-like body.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the filling and whisked whites lighten it and help it set when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Flaky pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky case that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the whisked egg whites until combined. Whites hold air that helps lighten the filling. Stir gently and only until combined, because overmixing knocks out the air and leaves a denser result.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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