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Preserve

A Fine Way to Cook Rice

A method for cooking rice using a double boiler and soup stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Rice and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,119 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Fine Way to Cook Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Start the rice

  1. In a double boiler, combine rice, salt, and boiling water.

  2. Cook rapidly for 20 minutes.

  3. Pour off all the water.

Finish the rice

  1. Add the white soup stock and cover tightly.

  2. Return to the fire and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Ensure the water in the lower boiler is boiling rapidly throughout.

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 + vealtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells as it absorbs liquid, becoming tender and forming the body of the dish.
White veal or chicken soup stock
Adds savoury flavour and moisture as the rice finishes cooking in the covered pot.

The step that matters

Keep the lower boiler boiling rapidly. The lower boiler's water transfers heat to the rice gently and steadily. If it stops boiling rapidly, heat drops, the rice cooks slowly and unevenly, and the grains may stay firm in places.

“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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