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Dessert

Rice Cake

A baked cake made with butter, flour, ground rice, sugar, currants, candied peel, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Rice Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Add salt, baking powder, ground rice, sugar, currants, and candied peel; mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add milk to create a stiff paste.

  5. Combine the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly.

Bake and cool

  1. Line two small tins with buttered paper and fill with the mixture.

  2. Bake for a little over an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

  3. Once baked, turn the cakes out onto their sides or a sieve to cool.

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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Rubbed into flour to coat particles and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure once moistened and baked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and open up.
Ground rice
Adds a fine, slightly crisp, tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Combining the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly. Mixing evenly distributes the baking powder so the cakes rise uniformly. Pockets of leavener can cause uneven rising and dense or crumbly patches, while the stiff paste must be well blended so no dry flour remains.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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