Skip to main content
Main

Baked Rice and Cheese

A casserole of boiled rice baked with a cheese sauce and buttered crumbs topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Baked Rice and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the milk with flour over medium heat.

  2. Add the cheese and stir until it is completely dissolved.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the rice and cheese sauce.

  2. Top with buttered crumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the top is golden brown.

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

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

  2. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  3. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it richness and a creamy, binding texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Boiled rice
Provides the bulk of the dish, absorbing the cheese sauce as it bakes.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with flour before adding cheese. Flour must be cooked into the milk over medium heat so its starch swells and thickens the liquid. If the sauce is not thick before the cheese goes in, it stays thin and the cheese may separate or turn greasy when heated.

“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

Rice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipesCheese RiceCheese Rice12 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes