Name: Rice Cake
Ingredients: 6 large eggs; 1 ½ cups fine sugar; 1 ½ cups butter (optional); ¾ cup rice flour; ¾ cup all-purpose flour

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Weigh the eggs in their shells and use the same weight for sugar and butter.
Mix the rice flour and all-purpose flour together.

Make the batter

Combine the eggs and sugar, then add the flour mixture.
Incorporate the butter in the usual way.
Add any desired flavoring.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour and 10 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs: Provide structure and moisture, and help the cake rise and set as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Rice flour: Gives a fine, tender crumb with less gluten structure than wheat flour.
All-purpose flour: Provides gluten structure that holds the cake together.
Fine sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps trap air in the batter for lift.

“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.