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Bice Bread

A rice bread made with milk, laurel leaves, and almond or vanilla essence, chilled to set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,456 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Bice Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Steep the laurel leaves in the milk, then remove them before adding the rice.

  2. Add the rice to the milk and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until tender.

  3. Stir in the essence of almonds or vanilla for flavor.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a quart mold and refrigerate overnight to firm up.

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. Almond + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Laurel + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  5. Laurel + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the mixture a soft, pudding-like body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the rice cooks in and the moisture that gives the set dish its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until tender. Rice must cook long enough for its starch to soften fully; undercooked grains stay firm and do not blend into a smooth, set texture as the mixture chills.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (laurel, milk, rice):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against laurel, milk, rice. 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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