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 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.
Make the sponge
Set a sponge with the water and yeast, adding some strong flour.
Boil the rice until soft, then strain and rub through a sieve.
Once the sponge is ready, mix the sieved rice into it.
Make and rise the dough
Add the milk, salt, sugar, and lard, then mix in more flour to form a medium dough.
Let the dough rise, then shape it and let it prove.
Bake
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) like other breads.
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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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,744 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 or whole rice
- Provides the starchy body and crumb structure of the bread.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the sponge and dough rise.
- Milk
- Adds moisture, softness, and browning from its milk sugars.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps it soft.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness, feeds the yeast, and aids browning in the crust.
The step that matters
Cook the rice until fully soft and sieve it smooth. Rice that is still firm or left unsieved leaves lumps and grains in the dough, which disrupt an even crumb and weaken the dough's structure as it rises.
“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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