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Creole Receipt for Boiling Rice

A simple Creole-style boiled rice cooked with butter and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creole Receipt for Boiling Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in three waters and dry it with a clean cloth after the last wash.

Boil and drain

  1. Bring a deep saucepan of water to a boil and sprinkle the rice into it.

  2. Boil uncovered for 20 minutes, then test several grains for tenderness.

  3. If not tender, boil for an additional 2-3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and drain the rice in a colander.

Dry and serve

  1. Once drained, return the rice to a saucepan with butter and salt.

  2. Place the saucepan where it can receive heat without scorching.

  3. Do not cover the saucepan.

  4. Occasionally turn the rice lightly from the bottom with a fork to prevent lumps.

  5. Check that the rice is dry and grains are separate.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the main body of the dish; its starch sets the texture as the grains cook and dry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the grains so they stay separate and taste rounded.

The step that matters

Drying the drained rice over gentle heat. Residual moisture makes rice gummy and clumpy. Keeping the pan uncovered lets steam escape, while gentle heat and occasional lifting from the bottom dry the grains without scorching them.

“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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