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Plain Boiled Rice

A simple boiled rice dish served with butter and sugar or molasses.

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

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 ↓

Plain Boiled Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice in four or five changes of water.

  2. Tie the rice in a pudding cloth, leaving plenty of room for it to swell.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the cloth in a pot of cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and let it boil slowly for two hours.

  3. Serve with butter and sugar or molasses.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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 absorbs water and swells, forming the bulk and soft texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that coats the cooked grains and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Tie the rice with room to swell. Rice grains absorb water and expand as they cook. A cloth tied too tightly restricts that swelling, so the grains can cook unevenly or the cloth can burst.

“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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