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Dessert

Rice Pie

A custard pie made with rice flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla, baked in a pie crust.

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

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.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the rice flour with a little cold milk to form a paste.

  3. Add the rice flour mixture to the boiling milk along with the butter.

  4. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  5. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and then add them to the mixture.

  6. Sweeten to taste with sugar and add vanilla extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Rice flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it cooks and cools.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pie its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickener and eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs after cooling slightly. If the mixture is still very hot when the beaten eggs go in, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Letting it cool slightly first helps the eggs thicken the custard evenly as it bakes.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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