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Drink

Rice Water

A simple beverage made by cooking rice in water and sweetening with sugar or honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Rice Water

Why it works: Rice and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,744 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Put the rice in a saucepan with the cold water.

  3. Set the saucepan on the fire and stir until it boils.

  4. Reduce the heat and let it boil slowly until the rice is thoroughly cooked.

Strain and serve

  1. Rinse the cooked rice through a fine strainer back into the saucepan.

  2. If the mixture is too thick, add a little more water and warm it thoroughly.

  3. Sweeten with sugar or honey to taste.

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 + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the cooking water into a light, drinkable liquid as the grains break down.
Cold water
Provides the liquid that cooks the rice and carries its starch into the finished drink.

The step that matters

Letting it boil slowly until the rice is thoroughly cooked. Rice needs sustained gentle boiling to soften fully and release starch. Stopping early leaves hard grains and a thin, chalky liquid, while overly vigorous boiling can scorch the bottom of the pan.

“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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