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Plain Boiled Rice

Plain boiled rice cooked with water, salt, and optional butter, nutmeg or cinnamon, and sweetened to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plain Boiled Rice

Why it works: Rice and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,779 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Add 1 pound of well-washed rice.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Drain the water.

Finish and serve

  1. Lightly grease the pan with butter.

  2. Return the rice to the pan.

  3. Let it swell slowly for about 20 minutes over low heat.

  4. Flavor with nutmeg or cinnamon.

  5. Sweeten to taste.

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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 water as it swells, becoming tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the rice from sticking to the pan.

The step that matters

Let it swell slowly over low heat. Gentle heat after draining lets the rice steam and absorb residual moisture evenly. High heat can scorch the bottom while the grains stay firm inside.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar. 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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