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Old-time Way of Cooking Rice

Rice cooked in a muslin bag, served with cream, sugar, or melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Old-time Way of Cooking Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a muslin bag.

Cook

  1. Drop the bag into a kettle of boiling water.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to the water.

  3. Place a saucer at the bottom of the kettle to prevent sticking.

  4. Cook for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar, or melted butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the main body of the dish as its starch cooks and softens in the boiling water.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the cooked rice when served.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the rice when served with cream.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the rice as a serving topping.

The step that matters

Place a saucer at the bottom of the kettle. Keeping the muslin bag off the base of the kettle helps prevent the rice from scorching or sticking to the hot metal while it cooks.

“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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