Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Rice-flour Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Make the soup
Mix rice-flour with a little cold broth to form a smooth batter.
Pour the batter into fast-boiling broth or gravy soup.
Add mace, cayenne, and salt if needed.
Boil for 10 minutes.
Finish
For added flavor, stir in curry powder and lemon juice.
To make a white soup, add thick cream if using veal stock.
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.
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,366 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,611 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Rice + macetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together932 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
-
Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,009 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fine rice-flour
- Thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup body.
- Broth or gravy soup
- Forms the liquid base that carries all the other flavors.
- Thick cream
- Adds richness and a pale, creamy color when used for a white soup.
The step that matters
Pour the batter into fast-boiling broth. Starch granules swell and thicken best in hot liquid, while a cold or slow pour lets flour clump into lumps. Mixing the flour smooth with cold broth first and then adding it to boiling liquid keeps the soup silky.
Swap the lemon
The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, mace, cream):
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, mace, cream. 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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