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Directions for Boiling Rice

A boiled rice dish flavored with butter and egg yolk, optionally studded with dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Directions for Boiling Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Pour the rice into boiling salted water and boil rapidly until the grains burst.

  2. Cover and place in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) or on a platter for 20-30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add butter and egg yolk, or serve with hot cream.

  2. Optionally, mix in dried currants, raisins, apricots, or prunes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  5. Currant + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch gelatinises and swells in boiling water, forming the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the grains and softening their texture.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the rice into a creamier mass.
Dried currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture when mixed through.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly until the grains burst. Vigorous boiling in plenty of salted water lets the grains cook evenly and swell fully. Gentle simmering can leave them firm or uneven, while the starch that releases from bursting grains is what gives the dish its soft, cohesive texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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