Why it works: Rice and milk 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 ↓
Proportion of Water and Length of Time for Cooking Different Cereals
Ingredients
Directions
Other cereals
Stir graham flour into water until the mixture is quite stiff, because it grows thinner by cooking.
Stir rye meal slowly into boiling salted water, the same as graham flour, and cook for 1 hour at least.
Use about 2/3 or 3/4 as much granular corn meal as other kinds for a given amount of liquid.
Cook cracked wheat with an extra quantity of water, mold it and serve it cold.
Put cracked corn (hominy, samp grits) into a round bottomed iron kettle with salt and plenty of water, adding more water when necessary, and cook it all day.
Prepare the rice
Wash commercial rice in several waters, scrubbing it thoroughly with the hands in a colander set in a pan of water, rinsing the colander up and down.
Put the washed rice over the fire in cold water, boil for 5 minutes and drain before cooking by any of the methods.
Cook the rice
After washing and parboiling rice, throw it into 3 or 4 times its bulk of boiling salted water.
Stir the rice over a hot fire until it rolls up in the rapidly boiling water.
Let it boil until it swells, then set it into the outer boiler or on the back of the stove on a pad until perfectly tender.
Do not stir the rice after it begins to swell.
Soak the rice over night, drain it and put it to cook in an equal quantity of boiling water, keeping it closely covered all of the time.
Put washed rice over the fire in double its bulk of cold water and let it boil up well.
If the water is not all absorbed, drain, sprinkle salt over if desired, and return to the fire closely covered until a faint crackling is heard.
Remove to the back of the range where the rice will just steam.
When ready to serve, stir the grain carefully with a wooden skewer or small round stick.
Put washed rice little by little into 8 times its bulk of rapidly boiling salted water, stirring occasionally at first with a fork.
Cook until tender, 15-25 minutes, according to the age and quality of the rice.
Finish and serve
Drain in a fine colander, pour cold water over to separate the kernels, put into the serving dish and set in a steamer or the edge of the oven for a half hour.
After washing, soak 1 cup of rice in 1 1/4 cup of warm water for an hour or longer, in a dish suitable for serving.
Add 1 level teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of milk and steam, without stirring, for just 1 hour.
Serve at once, or if it has to stand, cover close so the top kernels will not become hard.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Rice | 1 cup cooked (158g) white | 206 |
| Milk | 1 cup (244ml) whole | 149 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Water | not in our table | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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 + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 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
- Starch swells and softens as it cooks in water, becoming tender grains.
- Milk
- Adds fat and milk sugars that soften the texture and promote light browning.
- Graham flour (in the method)
- Starch thickens as it cooks, so the mixture starts stiff and thins with heat.
- Rye meal (in the method)
- Starch thickens in boiling water, forming a cooked porridge-like mass.
- Granular corn meal (in the method)
- Starch thickens and sets when cooked, so less is needed per amount of liquid.
The step that matters
Do not stir the rice after it begins to swell.. Once the grains start swelling, stirring rubs starch off their surfaces and breaks the kernels, making the rice gummy and mushy instead of separate and tender.
“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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