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Rice Paste for Sweets

A sticky paste made from ground rice, water, egg, butter, and salt, used as a base for sweets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Paste for Sweets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil the ground rice in ½ cup of water until soft.

  2. Strain the rice and beat it in a mortar until fine.

  3. Add the beaten egg, butter, and salt, and mix well.

Shape

  1. Mould the paste as you would for tarts.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Forms the bulk of the paste and gives it its body once softened and beaten.
Egg
Binds the paste together and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, smoother texture and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the rice until fine. Rice that is not beaten smooth stays grainy, so the paste will not mould evenly or give a fine, uniform texture. Straining first removes lumps and excess water that would weaken the paste.

“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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