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Buttered Rice

A simple dish of rice cooked in milk, buttered and sweetened with sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Buttered Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the rice, then drain it.

Cook the rice

  1. Put the rice in a pot with the new milk, just enough to swell it.

  2. Cook over medium heat until tender, then pour off the milk.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter, sugar, and pounded cinnamon, and shake to combine.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the dish as its starch swells and softens in the milk.
New milk
Provides the liquid that swells and cooks the rice, and adds creaminess.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat coating to the cooked rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the milk and cinnamon.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat until tender, then pour off the milk. Rice must absorb the milk gradually, so the heat should stay moderate. Too much heat can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pot before the grains soften. Pouring off the leftover milk once the rice is tender keeps the dish from turning soggy.

“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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