Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Rice Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.
Prepare the rice
If using uncooked rice, cook 4 cups of rice with 1 cup of water until very tender.
Optionally, pass the cooked rice through a ricer or colander.
Make the dough
In a bowl, combine boiled rice, lukewarm water, salt, sugar, flour, shortening, and yeast.
Mix until a dough forms, then knead until smooth.
Let the dough rise until doubled in size, then shape into a loaf.
Bake
Place the loaf in a greased loaf pan and let rise again before baking.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,611 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Boiled rice
- Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
- Flour
- Provides the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure.
- Yeast
- Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown.
- Shortening
- Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
The step that matters
Knead until smooth. Kneading develops the gluten in the flour into a stretchy network that traps the yeast's gas. Rice has no gluten, so the flour must carry the structure.
“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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