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Zitronenreis

Lemon rice cooked with butter, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar, simmered until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Zitronenreis

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Scald the rice and boil it with the butter and a little salt.

  2. Add the grated rind of 2 lemons, 4 tablespoons lemon juice, and sugar to taste.

  3. Scald the rice three times, adding a pinch of baking soda to the boiling water on the third time, then drain well.

Finish and serve

  1. Add to boiling milk, then add any desired flavoring and boil.

  2. Cover and simmer gently until the rice is soft, shaking the saucepan occasionally.

  3. Serve with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon if desired.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Rice
Starch that swells and softens to form the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the rice a richer texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that give a strong lemon fragrance.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Cover and simmer gently until the rice is soft. Gentle heat with the lid on lets the grains absorb liquid and soften evenly, while a hard boil can break them apart or scorch the bottom. Shaking the pan occasionally helps keep the rice from sticking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar. 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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