Name: Rice Griddle Cakes
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 1 tablespoon butter; 1½ cups all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 5 eggs, beaten; 1 quart milk

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

Pick and wash the rice.
Boil the rice until very soft, then drain it.
Stir in the butter and let it cool.

Make the batter

Sift the flour over the rice.
Add salt, beaten eggs, and milk.
Beat the mixture well.

Cook

Bake on a griddle.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Rice: Softened by boiling, it breaks down to give the batter body and a tender, starchy structure.
Eggs: Bind the batter and set during cooking, giving the pancakes structure and richness.
All-purpose flour: Adds starch and gluten that help the batter hold together and set into a sturdy pancake.
Milk: Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture and browning through its milk sugars.
Butter: Adds fat that contributes moisture, tenderness, and rich flavour to the pancakes.

“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.