Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Cake

A cake made with eggs, rice flour, powdered sugar, lemon peel, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rice Cake

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Whisk the eggs for 30 minutes.

  2. Add rice flour, powdered sugar, and lemon peel to the eggs.

  3. Mix this into the butter, which should be beaten to a cream.

  4. Bake the cake in a buttered tin.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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
Whisking them traps air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy structure.
Rice flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking, forming the cake's main structure.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily, contributing to a fine, tender crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat and richness, which tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that give the cake its fresh lemon fragrance.

The step that matters

Beating the butter to a cream. Creaming beats air into the butter, and those air pockets help the cake rise and keep a light texture. If the butter is under-beaten, the batter is denser and heavier.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More rice cake recipes

Almond 6Caraway 4Lemon 3with Almonds 3 See all 171 →

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes