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Dessert

Rice Muffins

A baked muffin made with boiled rice, milk, yeast, flour, lard, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Muffins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Rub the lard and sugar into the rice, then add the milk, working out the lumps.

  2. Stir in the dissolved yeast and enough flour to make a good batter.

  3. Let the batter rise for 5 to 6 hours.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and salt, beating well.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill muffin tins and let them stand, covered, for 20 minutes.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Ferments the batter over several hours, producing gas that makes the muffins rise and turn airy.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen batter together as it bakes.
Cold boiled rice
Adds body and a soft, tender crumb to the batter.
Milk
Moistens the batter and adds richness and browning through milk sugars.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas, adding lift and helping browning.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise for 5 to 6 hours. Yeast needs enough time to ferment the batter; rising too briefly leaves the muffins dense, while the gas it produces is what gives them an open, airy texture.

“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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