Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cheese Bice
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the rice
Boil rice in water until tender.
Drain and shake hard.
Let it stand at the back of the range for 10 minutes to dry.
Finish and serve
Add butter, cheese, and cayenne pepper.
Stir well and serve hot.
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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Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together942 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,861 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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 gives it its soft, tender body.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, coating the grains and carrying flavor.
- Cheese
- Supplies savory flavor and creaminess as it melts into the warm rice.
The step that matters
Drain and shake hard, then let stand to dry. Excess water left on the cooked rice would make the dish soggy and dilute the butter and cheese. Drying the grains lets them absorb the fat and cheese evenly and keeps the texture light.
“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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