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Italian Rice

A cheese sauce is poured over freshly cooked rice and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Italian Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until blended.

  2. Add the grated cheese and hot water, stirring rapidly until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the cheese sauce over the rice in a shallow serving dish.

  2. Sprinkle finely grated cheese on top and serve hot with a garnish.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Freshly cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the dish, giving the cheese sauce a base to sit on.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it absorbs liquid and heats.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it savoury flavour and body.
Annatto
Adds a yellow-orange colour to the cheese sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot water into the cheese sauce. Flour thickens only when it is evenly dispersed in liquid. Adding the hot water and cheese while stirring rapidly keeps the flour from clumping, so the sauce turns smooth rather than lumpy.

“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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