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Dessert

Rice Meringues

A sweet dish of cooked rice mixed with milk and eggs, topped with jam and meringue, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Meringues

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.

Make the rice base

  1. Combine ground rice and milk in a clean saucepan and simmer until soft.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks and cook gently without boiling.

Top and bake

  1. Pile the mixture high in the center of a dish and cover it with jam.

  2. Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks and spread over the jam.

  3. Sprinkle with caster sugar and bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes, leaving the door open to prevent browning.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool 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. 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

Ground rice
Thickens the milk as its starch swells on simmering, giving the base a soft, set body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the ground rice swells in, making a soft, moist base.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and help set the base; whites whisked to peaks give the light, airy topping.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the topping and dissolves into the egg whites, helping the meringue hold its shape and brown.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour, and a moist layer between the base and the topping.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolks gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but boiling can make them curdle and turn grainy, spoiling the smooth base.

“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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