Skip to main content
Main

Risotto a LA Milanaise

A creamy rice dish flavored with onion, butter, stock, nutmeg, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Risotto a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter or clarified dripping until golden brown.

  2. Add the rice and stir continuously for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the stock, stirring occasionally.

  4. Simmer gently until the rice is just soft.

  5. Add a small amount of grated nutmeg and grated cheese 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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs stock and softens, giving the risotto its creamy body.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the rice gradually, providing moisture and seasoning throughout.
Butter or clarified dripping
Fat that coats the rice grains and carries the onion flavour, adding richness.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and extra richness to the finished dish.
Chopped onion
Browned in fat to build a sweet, savoury base flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually. Adding stock slowly and stirring lets the rice release starch gradually, producing a creamy texture rather than a soupy or dry result. Adding it all at once prevents the grains from cooking evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, rice, cheese):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rice, cheese. 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.

You might also like

Rice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipesCheese RiceCheese Rice12 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes