Skip to main content
Main

Rice Cheese

A baked casserole of rice, cheese, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water until tender.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and mix well.

  2. Stir in the milk and cook until the sauce boils.

  3. Add the cooked rice and season with salt, cayenne, and black pepper.

  4. Stir in 3 oz of cheese and pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the casserole, giving it body and a soft, tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce that holds the rice together.
Cheese
Adds richness and flavour, and melts into the sauce while browning on top.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the flour cooks and swells.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until it boils. Flour must be cooked in the butter and milk until the sauce boils so the starch swells and thickens fully. Undercooked sauce stays thin and tastes of raw flour.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, cheese, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, cheese, butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Rice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipesCheese RiceCheese Rice12 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes