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Rice Soup

A simple soup made with stock, rice, onion, leek, parsley, and optional heated milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,326 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Bring the stock to a boil.

Make the soup

  1. Sprinkle the rice into the stock.

  2. Add the chopped onion, leek, and seasoning.

  3. Simmer for one hour.

  4. If desired, add a little heated milk at the end.

Serve

  1. Place parsley in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

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. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Parsley + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Rice + leektop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the whole soup.
Rice
Releases starch during simmering, which thickens the soup and gives it body.
Onion
Softens during simmering, adding sweetness and a savoury aromatic base.
Leek
Softens during simmering, adding a mild sweetness and depth to the broth.
Milk
Adds richness and smooths the flavour when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the heated milk. Milk can curdle and separate if it boils or is added to very hot soup too quickly. Warm it gently and stir it in near the end, off a hard boil, so the soup stays smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, leek, milk. 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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