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Drink

Rice Water

Rice water is a simple beverage made by boiling rice with water, salt, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rice Water

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 Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. In a pot, combine the rice and water.

  3. Bring to a boil over medium heat.

Simmer and season

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for at least 1 hour.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and cinnamon to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 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).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Releases starch that gives the water body and a slightly cloudy, silky texture.
Sugar
Adds gentle sweetness to the finished liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the liquid.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and simmer for at least 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets starch leach slowly from the rice and soften the grains evenly. Boiling hard can evaporate the water too fast and break the grains apart, so keep the heat low and the liquid moving only slightly.

“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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