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Drink

Rice Water

Rice water is a beverage made by simmering rice in water, then straining and seasoning with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rice Water

Why it works: Rice and sherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 572 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Pick over and wash the rice.

  2. Put the rice into a granite saucepan with boiling water.

  3. Simmer for 2 hours until the rice is softened and partially dissolved.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and add salt.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

  3. Add sherry or port if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rice + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch softens and partly dissolves into the water, giving the liquid body and a light thickness.
Boiling water
Acts as the cooking liquid that softens the rice and carries its starch into the final drink.

The step that matters

Simmer for 2 hours until the rice is softened and partially dissolved. A gentle simmer lets the grains soften and release starch slowly. A hard boil can break the grains unevenly and cloud the liquid, so keep the heat low and check that the rice has broken down before straining.

“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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