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Rice Custard

A custard made from milk, rice flour, egg, sweetener, nutmeg, and peach water or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice 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

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the rice flour with enough cold milk to create a smooth batter.

  3. Stir the batter into the boiling milk.

  4. Add the beaten egg and sweeten to taste.

  5. Mix in the nutmeg and peach water or lemon extract.

  6. Strain the mixture and serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  5. Nutmeg + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 custard as its starch cooks in the hot liquid.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the custard as it is heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickener and egg set into custard.

The step that matters

Stir the batter into the boiling milk. Rice flour starch must be fully dispersed in a smooth batter before it meets the hot milk, or it will clump. Keep stirring as it thickens so the starch cooks evenly and the custard stays smooth.

Swap the peach

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

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

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