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Dessert

Souffle of Rice

A baked rice soufflé flavored with lemon peel, sugar, butter, ratafia, orange flower water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Souffle of Rice

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.

Make the rice base

  1. Combine the rice, lemon peel, loaf sugar, and butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add enough milk to cover the rice and let it simmer gently until cooked, adding more milk as needed.

  3. Remove the lemon peel and stir in the pounded ratafia, orange flower water, egg yolks, and thick cream until well mixed.

Finish and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the beaten egg whites into the rice mixture gently.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched rice
Cooked until soft and swollen, it forms the thick body of the soufflé base.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the base set during baking.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Thick cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving a softer, richer texture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the base brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stirring instead of folding knocks out the air bubbles in the whipped whites. Gentle folding keeps them intact, so the soufflé rises well in the oven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, lemon, sugar, butter, milk, egg, cream):

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

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