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Dessert

Rice Cream

A thickened milk custard made with rice flour, sweetened and flavored, topped with frothy egg white frosting and baked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Rice Cream

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Grind rice to a very fine flour.

  2. Stir rice flour with a little cold milk and a pinch of salt.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk slowly.

  2. Stir in the rice mixture and add sugar and flavoring to taste.

  3. Stir continuously until thickened.

  4. Transfer to a white dish.

Frost and bake

  1. Whip the egg white to a froth and mix in pulverized sugar for frosting.

  2. Spread the frosting over the rice cream.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 3 minutes.

  4. Serve warm with currant jelly or cold with cream.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable cream as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice flour thickens into the pudding.
Egg white
Whips into a foam that sets into a light frosting on top of the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until thickened. Rice flour starch can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred, and it only thickens fully when heated with constant motion.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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