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Rice-water

A simple liquid made by simmering rice in water, seasoned with salt and optionally flavored with sherry or port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rice-water

Why it works: Rice and sherry work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 572 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Rice-water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the rice.

  2. Put the rice into a granite saucepan with boiling water.

Make the rice water

  1. Simmer for two hours until the rice is softened and partially dissolved.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add the coarse sea salt and serve warm or cold.

  4. Optionally, add sherry or port wine.

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 + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens and partially dissolves during simmering, releasing starch that thickens the water.

The step that matters

Simmer until the rice is partially dissolved. Long, gentle simmering lets starch leach out of the rice and thicken the water. Stopping too early leaves a thin liquid with little body.

“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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