Skip to main content
Main

Light Rice with Egg and Soda Crackers

A simple rice dish cooked with water, salt, butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, served with soda crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Light Rice with Egg and Soda Crackers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water with salt until the grains burst.

  2. Reduce heat and cook uncovered until the rice is dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in butter, egg yolk, and lemon juice.

  2. Serve with soda crackers.

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. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Provides the starchy bulk that swells, softens and sets as it cooks and dries.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body, thickening the rice gently as it is stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth texture and a rounder flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolk and butter.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk sets at a relatively low temperature. Stirring it into rice that is still over heat can scramble it into lumps instead of blending it smoothly into the dish.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, egg):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes