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How to Cook Rice for Crusts or Stands

A pressed rice paste molded into a crust, cooled, then cut into shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

How to Cook Rice for Crusts or Stands

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in plenty of cold water and drain it.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the rice with three times as much water.

  3. Add salt and butter, then bring to a boil while stirring.

  4. After six minutes, cover the pan tightly and place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven for one hour.

  5. Remove any browned rice from the top.

  6. Spoon the rice from the saucepan, avoiding any that sticks to the sides.

Shape the rice

  1. Pound the rice in a mortar to a fine paste and place it on a clean board.

  2. Dip your hands in cold water and work the rice together.

  3. Butter a mold of your desired shape, fill it with the rice, and smooth the surface.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and place a wooden cover inside the mold.

  5. Add a heavy weight on top to press the rice down solid.

  6. Let it sit for ten hours to cool.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the mold in hot water and turn the rice out onto a dish.

  2. Cut the rice into desired shapes with a small sharp knife and keep covered with a damp napkin until ready to use.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the set shape, and its starch binds it into a solid mass when pressed and cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the rice release cleanly from the buttered mold.

The step that matters

Pressing the rice while it cools. Pressing with a weight while the cooked rice is still warm lets the starches bond and compact the grains, so the shape holds its form when turned out and cut.

“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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