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Soup

Curry Rice Soup

A soup made with rice, milk, water, curry powder, butter, onion, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Curry Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the rice, onion, curry powder, and salt with the milk and water.

  2. Cook until the rice is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter and serve.

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. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens during cooking, giving body to the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, and softens the curry flavor into a richer broth.
Butter
Adds fat and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in at the end.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness as it softens into the broth.
Curry powder
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavor that defines the soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the rice is tender. Rice must cook long enough for its starch to soften fully, since undercooked grains stay firm and do not thicken the soup. Stirring occasionally keeps starch from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pot in the thickening milk.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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