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Cream of Rice

A thick soup made from rice, onion, carrot, and milk, finished with butter and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cream of Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, salt, white pepper, and the meat bone or chicken if using.

  3. Boil for 2 hours, adding water as needed to maintain the desired soup quantity.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the liquid and press the juice through a fine sieve.

  2. Stir in 1 pint of boiling milk, 1 teaspoon of butter, and mix in the yolks of 2 eggs.

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. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a rich, mild flavor to the finished soup.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup slightly and add a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling milk and egg yolks. Adding hot milk and yolks gently is important; if the soup is boiling too hard when the yolks go in, they can scramble and leave a grainy texture instead of a smooth, lightly thickened soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, clove, carrot, meat, 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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