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Cream of Rice Soup

A creamy soup made with rice, milk, butter, onion, and flour, seasoned with parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Cook the rice and onion in cold water until the rice is tender.

  2. Press the mixture through a sieve.

Make the milk base

  1. Melt the butter or drippings in a pot.

  2. Add the flour, milk, and seasonings.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the rice mixture with the milk mixture.

  2. Add the chopped parsley and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooks down into the body of the soup, thickening it and giving it a creamy texture when pressed.
Butter or drippings
Fat that coats the flour and carries flavor into the milk base.
Flour
Thickens the milk base as it heats, giving the soup body.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy liquid of the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the milk base for five minutes. Flour must be heated long enough to cook out its raw starch taste and to thicken the milk. Stopping early leaves a pasty flavor and a thin, grainy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, flour, parsley, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, flour, parsley, pepper. 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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