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Dessert

Rice Cake Without Butter

A baked cake made with eggs, caster sugar, lemon rind, flour, and ground rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rice Cake Without Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks, caster sugar, and lemon rind.

  2. Place the bowl over a saucepan of boiling water and stir until thick and light, about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir until cool.

  4. Gently fold in the flour and ground rice.

Bake

  1. Grease paper with almond oil and line a baking tin.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake at 300°F (150°C) 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift, with the whites beaten to hold air in the batter.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the yolk mixture thicken and lighten when beaten over heat.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the light batter together once it sets.
Ground rice
Gives a fine, tender crumb with a slightly sandy texture.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma to the cake.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk mixture over boiling water. Heat thickens the yolks and sugar and beats air into them, creating the light base that supports the cake. Stopping too early leaves the mixture thin and dense, while overheating can scramble the yolks.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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