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Dessert

Rice Custard

A sweet rice custard made with milk, cream, ground rice, almonds, rose water, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, mix the milk, cream, ground rice, pounded almonds, and rose water.

  2. Sweeten with loaf sugar and stir until it nearly boils.

  3. Add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs and stir. Let it simmer for about 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish or serve in cups, sprinkling sifted loaf sugar over the top.

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. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens the milk and cream as it heats, giving the custard body.
Egg yolks
Set into the warm liquid, thickening and enriching the custard.
Cream
Adds fat, giving a richer, smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice and yolks thicken.
Bitter almonds
Add a nutty, aromatic flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or boils hard, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly once the yolks go in.

“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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