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Escalloped Rice

A baked rice dish layered with cheese, white sauce, and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escalloped Rice

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.

Cook the rice

  1. Add 1 cup of washed rice to 4½ cups of boiling salted water in a pot and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

  2. Transfer the rice to a double boiler and finish cooking for 22 minutes without stirring.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a buttered dish, layer cooked rice, then grated cheese, then white sauce. Repeat until the dish is full.

  2. Cover the top with buttered crumbs made by melting 1 tablespoon of butter and mixing in 4 to 5 tablespoons of bread crumbs.

  3. Brown the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 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
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the sauce and cheese as it cooks.
Grated cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and flavor.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that binds the rice layers together.
Bread crumbs
Butter-coated crumbs toast on top, adding a crisp, browned surface.

The step that matters

Finish cooking the rice without stirring. Stirring releases starch from the rice grains, which makes the texture gummy and sticky. Leaving it undisturbed lets the grains cook separately and stay distinct.

“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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