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Dessert

Rice Biscuit

A yeast-leavened biscuit made with rice flour, milk, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Biscuit

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 sponge

  1. In a pot, combine scalding milk and ground rice; cook for a few minutes until thickened.

  2. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm, then add yeast, baking soda, and flour.

  3. Mix in enough lukewarm milk or water to form a sponge.

  4. Allow the sponge to rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, add butter and mix well.

  2. Transfer the dough into tins and let it rise again until light.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Ground rice
Thickens the scalded milk and adds a tender, slightly crumbly texture to the crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the risen dough together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Baking soda
Adds a small amount of lift and helps the crumb brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise until doubled. The sponge must be fully risen before butter is added, because yeast activity drives the lightness of the final bread. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while the rise depends on warm, lukewarm conditions that let yeast multiply.

“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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