Name: Risotto a LA Milanese
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; giblets of fowls; coarse sea salt; grated Parmesan cheese

Why it works: Rice and parmesan cheese work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 879 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Risotto a LA Milanese

Ingredients

1 cup rice
giblets of fowls
coarse sea salt
grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Prepare the broth

In a pot, cook the giblets of fowls until tender.
Add 4 cups of water and bring to a boil.

Cook the rice

Stir in the rice and a pinch of coarse sea salt.
Cook until the rice is tender and has absorbed most of the liquid.

Serve

Serve hot, topped with grated Parmesan cheese.

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.

Rice + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together879 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the body of the dish as its starch thickens and softens while absorbing the liquid.
Giblets of fowls: Flavor the cooking liquid, adding savory depth to the broth.
Grated parmesan cheese: Adds salty, savory flavor and richness to the finished dish.

“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.