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Rice Buns

Rice buns are small baked cakes made from ground rice, butter, sugar, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Buns

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine ½ cup ground rice, ½ teaspoon baking powder, ½ cup sugar, and ¼ cup butter, then mix together with a wooden spoon.

  2. Crack each egg into a cup to check for freshness, then beat them lightly with the other ingredients.

Bake

  1. Grease eight to ten small tins or a cake tin with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tins and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

Cool

  1. Turn the buns out of the tins and stand them on their edges to cool.

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. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Provides the starchy body of the bun and a tender, slightly crumbly texture, since it contains no gluten.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set in the oven, giving the buns their structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the buns rise.

The step that matters

Baking the buns for the stated time. Baking powder releases gas as the batter heats, and the eggs and starch set as the buns bake. Baking too long dries the crumb, while too short leaves the centre soft and underset.

“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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