Name: Rice Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 1 pint water; ½ pint milk; 1½ pints all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons baking powder

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 ↓

Rice Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

Boil the rice in water until tender.
Once tender, add the milk and let it cool.

Mix and bake

In a bowl, combine the cooled rice mixture with flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder, and mix together smoothly.
Pour the mixture into a greased tin.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

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.

Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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: Cooked rice adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the bread rise and become light.
Milk: Adds moisture and richness, and helps browning on the crust.

“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.