Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Fruit Tarts

Rice fruit tarts are sweet rice cakes filled with stewed currants, raspberries, and cherries, topped with stiff egg whites.

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

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 Fruit Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in milk until perfectly soft.

  2. Sweeten the rice with white sugar and let it cool slightly.

  3. Line a dish with the sweetened rice.

Fill and top

  1. Prepare the currants, raspberries, and cherries by stewing and sweetening them.

  2. Fill the dish with the prepared fruit.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the fruit.

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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Whole rice
Softened in milk, it forms the starchy base that holds the tart together.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the rice base and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Currants
Provide tart, concentrated fruit flavour and juice for the filling.
Raspberries
Add bright, tart fruit flavour and juiciness to the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they form a light topping that sets and browns.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites trap air when whipped to stiff peaks, and under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold their shape or set into a light topping. Any trace of yolk or fat prevents full whipping.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes