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Dessert

Boiled Rice with Milk

A simple dish of boiled rice cooked in milk and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Rice with Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the rice.

Cook

  1. Combine the rice, salt, and hot milk in the top of a double boiler.

  2. Steam for one hour, or until each grain is soft.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little sugar.

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

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Its starch absorbs the milk and swells as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Supplies the cooking liquid that softens the grains and makes the pudding creamy.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to taste at serving time.

The step that matters

Steaming until the grains are soft. Starch in rice softens fully only with sustained gentle heat and enough liquid. Using a double boiler keeps the milk below a hard boil so it is less likely to scorch or stick, while the grains slowly absorb the liquid and become tender.

“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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