Name: Rice Water
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon rice; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 quart cold water; cream (optional); sugar (optional); flavoring (optional)

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the rice thoroughly.
Combine the rice and salt in the cold water.
Cook for one hour or until the rice is soft.
Add cream, sugar, and flavoring 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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,399 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,744 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 thickens the cooking water and gives the drink its body.
Cold water: Serves as the liquid that the rice starch dissolves into during cooking.

“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.