Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
To Boil Rice for Curries, &C.
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rice
Wash the rice well in two changes of water.
Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.
Boil and drain
Add the rice to the boiling water and boil until three-quarters cooked.
Drain the rice in a sieve.
Finish cooking
Butter the bottom and sides of a stewpan and add the rice to the stewpan.
Cover tightly and place the stewpan by the side of the fire.
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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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Provides the starch that cooks into the body of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps keep the rice from sticking to the stewpan.
The step that matters
Boil until three-quarters cooked. Rice keeps absorbing water and softening while it steams covered, so stopping at three-quarters lets it finish gently without turning mushy.
“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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