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Rice and Nut Rabbit

A creamy rice and pecan casserole served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice and Nut Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and blend well.

  3. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring continuously until smooth and creamy.

  4. Add the shredded cheese and stir until well blended.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the cooked rice and chopped pecan nuts.

  2. Season with salt and paprika, then serve immediately on toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Cheese
Adds richness and flavour, and melts smoothly into the sauce.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy texture to the mixture.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, buttery flavour that contrasts the soft sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the milk while stirring continuously. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth rather than lumpy. Adding all the milk at once can trap clumps of flour that do not dissolve.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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