Name: Boiled Rice Au Geneve
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 2 cups cold water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 cup hare soup liquor; ½ cup cooked hare meat, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon browned flour; 1 tablespoon butter; Salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Rice Au Geneve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

Pick over and wash the rice.
Boil the rice in a furnace kettle with enough cold water to cover it by 1 inch, adding salt. Shake the kettle occasionally as the rice swells.

Make the gravy

In a separate pot, heat the hare soup liquor to a boil.
Stir in the browned flour, then add the chopped hare meat and butter. Season with salt and pepper, and stew gently for 5 minutes.

Serve

Pile the boiled rice in a dish and pour the gravy 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.

Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rice + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the gravy as the grains swell during boiling.
Browned flour: Thickens the hare soup liquor into a gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Hare meat: Provides the main meaty flavour and substance of the gravy.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the browned flour. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred in well. Stirring steadily as it goes in lets the starch disperse evenly, so the gravy thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

“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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Boiled Rice Au Geneve