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Rice — Continued.

A sweet rice gruel made with rice, milk, sugar, and optional cinnamon or brandy, sometimes including pearl barley and sago.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice — Continued.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice gruel

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in water for 3-4 hours.

  3. Strain the gruel from the rice.

  4. Warm the gruel with an equal quantity of milk.

  5. Sweeten the warmed gruel with loaf sugar.

Make the ground rice porridge

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water, ground rice, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Optionally add a stick of cinnamon or a glass of brandy before serving.

Make the barley and sago porridge

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 oz of rice, 1 oz of pearl barley, and 1 oz of sago with 3 pints of water.

  2. Simmer the mixture until tender, about 2 hours.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Sweeten the strained liquid with sugar.

  5. Add flavoring as 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 + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

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

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + barleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the gruel as its starch breaks down during long boiling, giving body to the porridge.
Ground rice
Thickens the porridge quickly, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavor of the gruel.
Pearl barley
Adds body and a chewy texture as its starch thickens the liquid.
Sago
Thickens the liquid as its starch gelatinizes, giving a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in water for 3-4 hours. Long boiling is needed for the rice starch to break down and thicken the liquid into gruel. Stopping early leaves it thin and the grains hard.

“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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