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 ↓
To Boil Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the rice to remove excess flour.
Add enough water to a pot to start boiling the rice.
Cook
Once boiling, gradually add milk while cooking slowly for nearly an hour.
Just before finishing, stir in the sugar and butter.
Finish
Beat the egg and mix it in just before serving.
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).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Its starch thickens as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
- Milk
- Provides the cooking liquid and creamy richness.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
- Egg
- Its proteins set and thicken the pudding, adding richness and body.
The step that matters
Mixing in the egg just before serving. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the beaten egg late, off the heat, lets it blend in and thicken gently. Adding it too early in a hot pot can scramble it and leave the pudding grainy.
“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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