Skip to main content
Main

Rice Soup

A simple soup made with Patna rice, saffron, cayenne pepper, mace, and white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and saffron work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.

  2. Add the rice to the boiling water.

  3. Boil the rice until tender.

  4. Drain the rice in a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the drained rice to the boiling stock and simmer for a few minutes.

  2. Season with saffron, cayenne, and mace to taste.

  3. 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 + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Saffron + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Patna rice
Starch that softens and thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the rice only until tender. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and softening after it leaves the pot. Overcooking it before it joins the stock leaves the grains mushy and the soup thick and pasty.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, saffron, pepper. 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.

More rice soup recipes

Tomato 17White 16Chicken 10Italian 7Mutton 6Curry 5 See all 159 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes