Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice Jelly

Rice jelly is a dessert made by boiling rice with salt, pressing it, molding it, and serving with cream, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rice Jelly

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice jelly

  1. Boil rice in boiling water salted with coarse sea salt for 30 minutes or until soft.

  2. Press the rice through a strainer.

  3. Pour into a small mold and let it cool until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, sugar, and a little jelly, cinnamon, or nutmeg.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Rice
Breaks down as it boils and, once pressed and cooled, sets into a firm, spoonable mass.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft contrast to the firm rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the plain rice.

The step that matters

Press the rice through a strainer. Pressing breaks the softened grains into a fine, smooth purée. Rice left whole will not set into a uniform, smooth texture when cooled.

“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 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes