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Risotto a LA Milanaise

A creamy rice dish cooked with onion, butter, stock, nutmeg, cheese, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Risotto a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter or clarified dripping until golden brown.

  2. Add the rice and stir continuously for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the stock, stirring occasionally, and simmer gently until the rice is just soft.

  4. Add a small amount of grated nutmeg and grated cheese before the rice is fully cooked.

  5. Stir and cook for 3-4 minutes until the rice is completely soft.

  6. Remove from heat, add a small pat of butter, stir well, and serve hot.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the stock as it cooks, giving the risotto its creamy, soft body.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gelatinises the rice starch and cooks the grains through.
Butter or clarified dripping
Fat for frying the onion, carrying flavour and aiding browning.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and richness that melts into the rice.
Chopped onion
Builds a sweet, savoury flavour base when fried to golden brown.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually. Adding stock in small amounts and stirring lets the rice release its starch slowly, creating a creamy texture. Adding it all at once leaves the rice soggy or unevenly cooked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rice, cheese. 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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