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Rice Soup Without Meat

A simple rice soup made with rice, water, milk, butter, egg yolks, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly and rub it dry.

  2. Put the rice in a saucepan with 1 pint of cold water.

  3. When the rice swells, add 1 pint of boiling water.

  4. When the rice is very tender, add the remaining 1 pint of boiling water.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Finish the soup

  1. Beat the egg yolks with a few tablespoons of cream until smooth.

  2. Stir in a few spoonfuls of the boiling rice water carefully.

  3. Pour the egg and cream mixture into the saucepan, stirring briskly.

  4. Remove from heat and stir for 2-3 minutes without allowing the soup to boil.

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and softens during cooking, giving the soup body.
Egg yolks
They thicken the soup as they gently set with heat, adding richness.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy, mellow richness to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks set smoothly only when heated gently. Stirring in some hot rice water first warms them gradually, and stirring them into soup that is kept below a boil prevents them from scrambling into lumps.

“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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