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Sauce

Rice Sauce

A creamy sauce made from milk, onion, rice, cream, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat 1 pint of milk with 1 onion and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add 1/4 pound of well-picked and washed rice and simmer until tender.

  3. Remove the onion and pepper, then rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Stir in 2 tablespoons cream, 1 ounce butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  5. Serve with dishes that pair well with bread sauce.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down during simmering to thicken the milk into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice thickens into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice until tender. The rice must cook fully so its starch breaks down and thickens the milk. Undercooked grains leave the sauce grainy after sieving and thin in body.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, pepper, rice, cream, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, rice, cream, butter, nutmeg. 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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