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Dessert

Rice Buns

Rice buns are sweet yeastless buns made with ground rice, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon essence, baking powder, and candied peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and mix in the sugar.

  2. Break the eggs into a bowl one at a time, add the lemon essence and beat well.

  3. Mix the ground rice and flour together.

  4. Gradually add the egg mixture to the butter.

  5. Mix in the flour, then add the baking powder and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Place the mixture in small heaps on a greased baking sheet.

  2. Top each heap with a little candied peel and a little castor sugar.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  4. Cool on a wire rack.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Ground rice
Gives a light, slightly sandy texture that differs from wheat flour.
Flour
Provides structure so the heaps hold their shape while baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the buns rise and become light.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the buns and helps the tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the egg mixture to the butter. Adding eggs slowly lets the fat and liquid emulsify into a smooth batter. Adding them all at once can cause curdling, which may leave the buns greasy or dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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