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 ↓
How to Cook Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the rice in water for 2 hours.
In a pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and add a little salt.
Drain the soaked rice and add it to the boiling water without stirring.
Cook and serve
Boil the rice for 10 minutes, then strain the water.
Return the rice to the pot and steam for 15 to 20 minutes until the grains are separate.
Add butter and serve.
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.
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 bulk of the dish; soaking and boiling soften the starch so the grains cook through.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, coating the grains and softening their flavor.
The step that matters
Boil the rice for 10 minutes, then strain the water. Boiling in plenty of water and draining off the excess removes surface starch, which keeps the grains from clumping and turning gluey.
“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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