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Dessert

Rice Pie

A baked dessert made with milk, rice flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Rice Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a small bowl, mix ½ cup of rice flour with a little cold milk.

  3. Add the rice flour mixture to the boiling milk along with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then add 5 beaten eggs.

  5. Sweeten to taste with sugar and flavor with vanilla extract.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rice + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Rice flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pie its firm, custardy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and provides its creamy richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Adding the rice flour mixture to the boiling milk. Rice flour must be dispersed in cold milk first, then added to hot liquid, so it thickens smoothly instead of clumping. Lumps formed this way cannot be fully smoothed out later.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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