Name: Steamed Rice
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 4 cups water or milk; 2 teaspoons salt

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Rice

Ingredients

1 cup rice
4 cups water or milk
2 teaspoons salt

Directions

Combine rice, water or milk, and salt in a double boiler.
Cook for 2 to 3 hours, following the directions for cooking cereals.

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.

Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Starch that softens and swells during long cooking, forming the body of the dish.
Water or milk: Liquid that hydrates the rice grains, and milk adds richness and mild sweetness.

“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.