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Dessert

Rice and Raisins

Rice cooked with raisins, sweet milk, and boiling water, served warm or cold with cream or fruit sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rice and Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine rice, raisins, sweet milk, and boiling water.

  2. Boil the mixture together until the rice is cooked.

  3. Serve warm or cold with cream or fruit sauce.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the liquid as it cooks, becoming tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they plump in the cooking liquid.
Sweet milk
Provides the cooking liquid, adding richness and creaminess as the rice softens.

The step that matters

Boil until the rice is cooked. Rice absorbs liquid gradually, so it can end up either undercooked and hard or mushy if the heat and liquid are not balanced. Watching the texture, not just the clock, helps the grains become tender while the mixture stays spoonable.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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