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Rarebit, Nut and Rice

A cheese sauce with butter, flour, milk, nuts, and rice served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rarebit, Nut and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth.

  4. Stir in the cheese until melted.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked rice and chopped nuts, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Serve the mixture on hot buttered toast.

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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the base and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, giving it creaminess.
Cheese
Provides the main flavor and melts into the sauce to make it rich and thick.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture to the mixture.
Chopped nuts
Adds crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor against the smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the cheese until melted. Cheese turns stringy or grainy if it overheats or is added to a boiling sauce. Keeping the heat gentle lets the proteins melt smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cheese, rice, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, rice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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