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Drink

Rice Coffee

A beverage made by steeping ground brown rice in boiling water, sweetened with sugar and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Coffee

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Brown the rice as you would coffee beans.

  2. Grind or mash the rice in a mortar.

Brew and serve

  1. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over ½ cup of the ground rice.

  2. Let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Sweeten with loaf sugar and season with boiled milk.

  5. Serve and enjoy, especially for children.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Brown rice
Browning develops roasted, coffee-like aroma and flavour as the grains toast.
Boiling water
Extracts flavour and soluble compounds from the ground rice during steeping.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the roasted, slightly bitter flavour of the brewed rice.
Boiled milk
Adds creaminess and softens the roasted flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the rice. Browning the rice evenly before grinding creates the roasted flavour that defines the drink. Under-browned rice tastes flat and grassy, while over-browned rice turns bitter and acrid. Browning is a Maillard and caramelisation process, so colour is the guide.

“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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