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Baked Rice and Cheese

A baked casserole of rice and cheese layered with a thin white sauce and topped with buttered cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Baked Rice and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cook the rice in 8 cups of boiling water for 20 to 30 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, arrange layers of rice and grated cheese.

  2. Moisten the layers with the thin white sauce.

  3. Cover with buttered cracker crumbs.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the casserole, giving it body and a soft, absorbent texture.
Cheese
Melts between the layers and adds richness and savory flavor.
Thin white sauce
Moistens the layers so the rice stays tender rather than dry as it bakes.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor in the sauce and helps the buttered crumbs brown.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown. Baking long enough lets the buttered crumbs brown and the cheese melt through the layers, but overbaking dries out the rice and sauce. Watch for light browning on top as the signal to stop.

“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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