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Drink

Rice

A sweetened rice water beverage made by boiling rice with cinnamon until it becomes pulp, then straining and sweetening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice water

  1. Wash the rice well in two or three waters.

  2. In a stewpan, bring 1 quart of warm water to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, add the rice and the cinnamon stick.

  4. Boil for 1 hour until the rice becomes a pulp.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Remove from heat and strain the rice-water into a basin.

  2. Sweeten the rice-water to taste and let it cool before using.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Rice
Breaks down during boiling to thicken and flavour the water into a pulpy, starchy liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the strained rice water.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour until the rice becomes a pulp. Long simmering softens the rice starch until the grains break down. Stopping early leaves the water thin and gritty, while the strained liquid still needs to cool before serving.

“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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