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Dessert

Rice Cake

A cake made from rice flour, wheat flour, powdered sugar, eggs, orange flower water, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rice Cake

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rice Cake

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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the rice flour, wheat flour, and powdered sugar together.

  3. Strain the eggs and add them to the flour mixture.

  4. Flavor with orange-flower water and essence of lemon or grated lemon rind.

  5. Beat the mixture well for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into a well-buttered tin and bake for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine rice flour
Provides the main structure and a tender, delicate crumb in the cake.
Eggs
Set during baking to give structure and lift, and add richness to the crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily, giving a fine texture.
Wheat flour
Adds extra structure alongside the rice flour so the cake holds its shape.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well for 20 minutes. Long beating traps air in the egg batter, which expands in the oven and gives the cake its lift. Under-beating leaves a dense cake.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Orangethe original

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