Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Custard

A baked rice custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Custard

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. In a pot, combine rice, milk, and salt.

  2. Steam for 1 hour or until rice is soft.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar.

  2. Add this mixture to the rice just before removing it from heat.

  3. Stir thoroughly without boiling.

  4. Add vanilla extract to the rice mixture.

Top and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, adding a little sugar.

  2. Transfer the rice mixture to a pudding dish and top with the beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the top is slightly browned.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites give a light topping that sets and browns.
Rice
Its starch thickens the milk and gives the custard a soft, spoonable body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base, and its milk proteins set and brown in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Adding the yolk mixture to the hot rice. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Stirring the yolks in off the heat and never letting the mixture boil lets them thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

“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 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes