Why it works: Milk and rice 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 ↓
Moist Rice Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the dough
In a large pot, mix 3 quarts of cold milk and water with 1½ pints of ground rice.
Boil the mixture for 3 to 4 minutes until it becomes a thin gruel.
Stir in Graham flour until the mixture is too stiff to stir with a spoon.
Let the mixture cool to lukewarm.
Add 2 cups of yeast and coarse sea salt to the cooled mixture.
Allow the dough to rise.
Bake
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.
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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Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,611 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
- Ground rice
- Forms the bulk of the dough and gives the loaf its starchy, tender crumb once cooked.
- Graham flour
- Adds gluten and stiffness, giving the dough enough structure to hold its shape.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise, lightening the loaf's texture.
- Cold milk and water
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the rice and forms the gruel.
The step that matters
Boil the rice mixture until it is a thin gruel. Boiling gelatinizes the starch in the ground rice, so it thickens and can bind with the other ingredients. Undercooked rice stays grainy and the loaf may not hold together.
“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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