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Dessert

Rice Meringue

A dessert of rice cooked in water and milk with egg yolks and lemon, topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the rice in water until tender.

  2. Add milk, egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon rind, and sugar; mix well.

  3. Bake the mixture until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add 1 cup sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in the oven.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Cooked until tender, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks with sugar, they form the light topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the base become soft and creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and stabilises the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until firm and glossy, and sugar added gradually, so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a stable, browned topping rather than weeping or collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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