Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Cake, with Almonds

A baked rice cake flavored with almonds, sugar, butter, and milk, finished with apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Cake, with Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the rice mixture

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with butter, sugar, bitter almonds, sweet almonds, milk, and salt.

  2. Cook gently on a low heat until the milk is absorbed and the rice is tender, adding more milk if necessary.

  3. Once cooked, mix in the egg yolks and whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a mold with butter and sprinkle shredded almonds inside.

  2. Pour the rice mixture into the mold and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  3. Once done, turn the cake out onto a dish and pour diluted apricot jam around the base before serving.

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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the starchy body that sets the cake's soft, sliceable structure as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the baked cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown its surface during baking.
Milk
Hydrates and cooks the rice, giving the cake its moist, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it as it sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped air lightens the mixture and helps the cake rise and stay tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped and added gently; overmixing or deflating them makes the cake dense instead of light.

Swap the apricot

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

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

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

You might also like

Rice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipes