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Brown Rice

Brown rice cooked in butter with water and salt, optionally with dried mushrooms, served with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Brown Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, brown the rice in butter until it turns light yellow.

  2. Add boiling water and salt, then boil for 30 minutes or longer.

  3. If desired, add dried mushrooms during cooking.

  4. Serve with eggs.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Brown rice
Forms the bulk of the dish, and its starch softens into a chewy, tender texture as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and, when the rice is toasted, a nutty aroma and light golden color.

The step that matters

Browning the rice in butter. Toasting rice in butter coats each grain in fat, which helps the grains stay separate and adds a nutty flavor. Stop at light yellow, because butter that darkens quickly turns bitter.

“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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