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A Rice Soup

A sweet rice soup flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, and egg yolks, finished with white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. In a pot, combine 2 quarts of water, 1 pound of rice, and a small stick of cinnamon.

  2. Cover and simmer gently until the rice is tender.

  3. Remove the cinnamon stick and sweeten the mixture to your taste.

  4. Grate in ½ nutmeg and let the mixture cool.

Thicken with eggs and wine

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 3 eggs with ½ pint of white wine.

  2. Mix the egg and wine mixture into the rice.

  3. Place the pot over low heat, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

  4. Cook until the soup thickens and begins to boil, then remove from heat.

  5. Continue stirring until ready to serve.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cinnamon and sugar 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
Cooks into tender grains that give the soup its body and bulk.
Egg yolks
Set with gentle heat to thicken the soup into a smooth, creamy texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps keep the beaten yolks smooth when mixed in.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that flavors the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and wine mixture over low heat. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when exposed to high heat. Keeping the heat low and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken the soup smoothly instead of turning grainy.

“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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