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Savory Rice a LA Milanaise

A baked rice custard with veal, ham, eggs, cheese, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Savory Rice a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice well.

  2. Strain the broth through a thin cloth.

  3. Add twice as much boiling water, with salt.

  4. Add the rice.

  5. Cook slowly until it absorbs all the water and is soft.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the hot milk with the eggs, cheese, and butter.

  2. Stir in the minced veal and ham.

Bake and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a greased mold.

  2. Cover the mold.

  3. Bake in a water bath at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  4. Dip the mold in cold water.

  5. Invert onto a flat dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs liquid as it cooks, becoming soft and giving the dish its body.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the mixture into a sliceable mass.
Hot milk
Adds moisture and keeps the mixture tender as it sets.
Cheese
Contributes savory flavor and helps the surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.
Minced veal
Adds meaty savory flavor and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. The gentle, indirect heat of a water bath keeps the egg-set mixture from overheating at the edges. Too much direct heat can make eggs curdle and turn the texture grainy and rubbery.

“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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