Name: Rice Water
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons rice; 1 quart boiling water; fruit juice (orange, canned cherries, blackberries, or strawberries)

Why it works: Rice and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,067 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

2 tablespoons rice
1 quart boiling water
fruit juice (orange, canned cherries, blackberries, or strawberries)

Directions

Make the rice water

Put rice in a saucepan with boiling water.
Simmer for 2 hours.
Strain the mixture.

Serve

Serve the rice water hot or cold.
Add fruit juice to taste.

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.

Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Releases starch into the water, giving the drink its body and slight thickness.
Fruit juice: Adds sweetness, acidity and fruity flavour to the rice water.

“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.