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Rice Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with rice, stock, milk, eggs, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine onion and celery in the stock.

  2. Tie the mace, sweet herbs, and peppercorns in a small piece of muslin and add to the stock.

  3. Bring the stock to a boil.

Thicken

  1. Mix rice flour with about 2 cups of milk.

  2. Add the rice flour mixture to the boiling stock.

  3. Stir the mixture until it thickens.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add more milk or stock.

  5. Cook slowly.

Finish

  1. Mix the remaining milk with the egg yolks.

  2. Add the yolk mixture to the soup just before finishing.

  3. Pass some of the vegetables and rice through a sieve.

  4. Carefully stir in the yolks and milk mixture.

  5. Pour the soup into a jug.

  6. Place the jug in a saucepan with boiling water to thicken.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rice flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid and thickens the soup.
Egg yolks
Proteins set on gentle heating, adding body and richness to the soup.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid base and dairy richness.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid that the vegetables and rice cook in.

The step that matters

Carefully stir in the yolks and milk mixture. Egg yolk proteins set and can curdle or turn grainy if the soup is too hot when they go in. Adding them gradually and keeping the soup below a boil helps them blend smoothly into the thickened base.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, egg, rice, flour, onion):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, egg, rice, flour, onion. 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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