Skip to main content
Bread

Rice Soup

A soup made with rice, rhubarb, lean ham, broth, and bread crumbs, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the rice until clean.

  2. Blanch the rice in boiling water and drain.

  3. In a pot, season the broth and bring it to a boil.

  4. Add the rice and boil gently until just tender.

Make the soup

  1. Peel and wash the rhubarb, then blanch in hot water for 3-4 minutes and drain.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the rhubarb, ham, and butter, and stew gently until tender.

  3. Add the consomme and boil for 15 minutes, skimming off the fat.

  4. Stir in the bread crumbs and season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  5. Pass the soup through a fine sieve and serve with fried bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + rhubarbtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 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
Thickens the soup as it cooks and gives it body and a soft, tender texture.
Rhubarb
Provides the main vegetable flavour and tartness, and softens into the soup when stewed.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stewed rhubarb and the soup base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the rhubarb and ham stew.
Bread crumbs
Help thicken the soup and give it a fuller, smoother body.
Consomme
Forms the clear, flavourful liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming off the fat while the consomme boils. Fat that is not removed during boiling stays in the soup and makes it greasy and cloudy on the palate, so it must be skimmed as it rises.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, ham, butter, bread, 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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipes