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Plain Rice and Broth

A simple soup of rice cooked in broth, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Plain Rice and Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the broth into a stewpan and bring it to a boil.

  2. Wash the rice in cold water, using two or three changes of water.

Cook and serve

  1. Once the broth is boiling, add the rice and cook for about 20 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve in a soup-tureen with grated cheese on a plate apart.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that thickens the broth as it cooks and gives the soup body.
Broth
Liquid base that cooks the rice and carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the rice to boiling broth. Rice should go into broth that is already at a boil so cooking starts evenly. Starting in cool liquid can leave grains unevenly cooked and can make the soup gummy as it sits.

“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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