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Dessert

Rice Cheese-Cakes

A baked cake made from ground rice, milk, butter, currants, sugar, and eggs, lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Cheese-Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Thicken the ground rice in milk over low heat.

  2. Add butter, currants, and sugar; mix well.

  3. Stir in the eggs until fully combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease patty pans and line with puff pastry.

  2. Fill with the mixture and bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  3. Turn out of the pans and cool bottom up on a dish.

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

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

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Thickens with milk to form the body of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set when baked, giving it structure.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add chewy texture and small pockets of sweet flavour.
Milk
Hydrates the ground rice so it thickens into a smooth base.

The step that matters

Thicken the ground rice in milk over low heat.. Ground rice must be heated gently and stirred so it thickens evenly without scorching or forming lumps, which would give the filling a grainy texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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