Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Bice Panada
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the rice
Boil the rice in water until tender.
Add the powdered sugar and salt.
Thicken and serve
Mix the flour or oatmeal with cold water to form a thin paste.
Stir in the curry powder and add to the rice.
Boil for 20 minutes and serve.
For a sweet version, substitute treacle for curry.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,611 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Forms the bulk of the pudding and softens into a tender base when boiled.
- Flour or oatmeal
- Thickens the liquid and gives the pudding body as its starch cooks.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness to the rice.
- Curry powder
- Adds aroma and spiced flavour to the pudding.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness and a deep flavour in the sweet version, in place of curry.
The step that matters
Mixing the flour or oatmeal with cold water into a thin paste. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid directly. Dispersing it in cold water first lets the granules separate, so it thickens the rice evenly without lumps.
“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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