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Rice Milk Soup

A creamy soup made from soaked rice, milk, and eggs, seasoned with salt, sugar, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Milk Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice well in several waters and soak it for 2 to 3 hours in the last water.

  2. Put the rice with water in a saucepan and boil until the rice absorbs the water.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, boil the milk.

  2. When the milk boils, pour it over the rice.

  3. Stir well for 30 minutes.

  4. Add salt, sugar, and the bay leaf.

  5. Boil for another 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the bay leaf.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, break the egg yolks.

  2. Pour the cold milk drop by drop over the eggs and mix with a spoon.

  3. When the milk has stopped boiling, add the egg mixture and stir.

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

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Carolina rice
Starch that thickens the milk as it cooks and softens into a creamy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, as it simmers with the rice, gives the soup its creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when stirred in off the boil.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they meet a boiling liquid. Tempering them with cold milk first and adding the mixture once the milk has stopped boiling lets them thicken the soup smoothly.

“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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