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Rice-Casserole in the French Style

A baked rice dish cooked with onions, consommé, and clarified butter, then filled with ragout.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Rice-Casserole in the French Style

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 the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water until soft and dry.

  2. Add consommé, onions, and salt if making a savory dish.

  3. Let the rice cool.

  4. Mix the cooled rice into a paste with a wooden spoon.

Shape and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a baking tin with the rice paste, about 4 inches high and 7 inches wide.

  2. Smooth the outside of the rice paste.

  3. Carve the rice paste in relief.

  4. Mark a cover on top of the rice paste, about 4 inches in diameter.

  5. Make a deep incision around the cover.

  6. Pour clarified butter over the whole.

  7. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour until amber.

Fill and serve

  1. Remove the cover.

  2. Scoop out the pulp.

  3. Fill the center with your prepared ragout.

  4. Pour in a little appropriate sauce.

  5. Replace the cover.

  6. Glaze the prominent parts before serving.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the casserole and, once boiled and cooled, binds into a paste that holds its shape.
Onions
Add savory flavor and aroma to the rice when the savory version is made.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that helps the surface brown to a rich amber in the oven.

The step that matters

Make the deep incision around the cover. The cut must be deep enough to separate the lid from the shell so the cover can be lifted off after baking and the center filled without breaking the crust.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter. 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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