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Rice Sauce

A creamy sauce made with milk, onion, rice, cream, butter, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Rice Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the onion and pepper until boiling.

  2. Add the rice, which should be well picked and washed.

  3. Let it simmer until the rice is tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the onion and pepper, then rub the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the cream, butter, salt, and nutmeg until well combined.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice softens and thickens in.
Rice
Breaks down during simmering and, once sieved, thickens the sauce to a smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a silkier mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the cooked rice and onion through a sieve breaks down remaining solids and creates a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the sauce grainy or lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, cream, butter, nutmeg. 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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