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Drink

Rice Water

Rice Water is a beverage made by soaking and boiling rice, then straining the liquid and optionally flavoring it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rice Water

Why it works: Lemon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice well with cold water.

  2. Soak the rice in 1 quart of tepid water for 3 hours.

Make the rice water

  1. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the liquid.

  3. Flavor with lemon peel, cloves, or other spices if desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Releases starch into the water, giving the liquid its body and slight thickness.
Water
Carries the rice's starch and flavor, becoming the liquid base of the drink.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour. Gentle heat lets starch and flavor leach out of the rice gradually. Rapid boiling can break the grains apart and make the liquid cloudy and rough.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, clove):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, clove. 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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