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Dessert

Rice Custard

Rice custard is a sweet dish made from rice, milk, eggs, and sugar, baked with a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the rice in water until fully swelled.

  2. Add milk and boil slowly until it thickens to a jelly.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and sugar while boiling.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and place in the oven for a few minutes.

Top and bake

  1. Prepare a meringue by beating the egg whites and mixing in powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the custard and bake until it turns a delicate brown.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Swells and thickens with milk, giving the custard its body and jelly-like texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a soft, creamy custard as it thickens.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness when stirred into the hot mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that adds airy lightness and browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue brown.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue over the custard and bake until it turns a delicate brown. Baking only until a delicate brown keeps the meringue light and tender; overbaking can make it dry and tough. Egg whites need to be beaten well so the meringue holds its shape on the custard.

“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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