Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Baked 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.
Prepare
Wash the rice and place it in a pudding dish that holds at least 1 quart.
Add salt and butter to the rice.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the milk is absorbed, about 45 minutes.
Serve with cream and sugar or as a vegetable with meats.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 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
- Rice
- Its starch swells and softens as it cooks, giving the dish its body.
- Milk
- It provides the cooking liquid, and its proteins and sugars set and brown to create a creamy texture.
- Butter
- Its fat adds richness and a mellow flavour to the rice.
The step that matters
Baking until the milk is absorbed. Milk thickens and sugars brown slowly in the oven. Stopping too early leaves the rice loose and wet, while baking too long can dry it out and scorch the surface.
“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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