Name: Rice Paste for Tarts, &C
Ingredients: ¼ pound boiled rice; ¼ pound beef marrow or sweet oil; flour (to taste); cream (to taste); sifted sugar (to taste); 4 eggs

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Paste for Tarts, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

Pound the boiled rice in a marble mortar until smooth.
Add beef marrow or sweet oil and mix well.
Incorporate a little flour, cream, and sifted sugar.
Add the eggs and mix until combined.

Shape and cook

Shape into small cakes and bake or boil as desired.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Boiled rice: Forms the bulk of the paste and gives it body once pounded smooth.
Beef marrow or sweet oil: Adds fat, which gives richness and a softer, moister texture.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set when baked or boiled.
Sifted sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the paste brown lightly when baked.

The step that matters

Pounding the rice until smooth. Rice that stays lumpy will give a grainy paste. Breaking the grains down fully lets the fat, eggs and sugar blend evenly, so the shaped cakes hold together and cook at the same rate.

“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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Rice Paste for Tarts, &C