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Dessert

Ground Rice Cheese-cakes

A sweet rice cake made with ground rice, milk, butter, sugar, egg yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Ground Rice Cheese-cakes

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.

Make the filling

  1. Mix ground rice with milk and boiling milk until smooth.

  2. Stir for 3-4 minutes until thick.

  3. Add butter and sugar.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Stir in beaten egg yolks and lemon juice.

Fill and bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Dust with powdered cinnamon or grated lemon rind before baking, if desired.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the filling so it sets softly when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks after the mixture has cooled. Adding yolks to a very hot mixture can scramble them. Cooling first keeps the filling smooth and lets the yolks thicken it evenly as it bakes.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon. 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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