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Savory Rice

A baked rice dish with butter, cheese, eggs, carrots, and milk, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Savory Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the boiled rice, chopped carrots, grated cheese, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Moisten the mixture with milk and season with coarse sea salt.

Bake

  1. Heap the mixture onto a dish and brown it in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the mixture brown lightly in the pan.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps bind the mixture while it melts and browns.
Boiled rice
Forms the body of the casserole, giving bulk and a soft texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliceable texture as the eggs set into the mix.
Cooked carrots
Add natural sweetness, moisture and color to the mixture.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with milk. Too little milk leaves the rice and egg dry, while too much makes the casserole soggy and slow to brown. Add it gradually so the mixture is moist but still holds its shape when heaped onto the dish.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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