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Boiling for Curries

A simple boiled rice suitable for curries, cooked with lemon juice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Boiling for Curries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice in several changes of cold water until clear.

  2. In a saucepan, bring at least 1 quart of water to a boil.

  3. Add lemon juice and salt to the boiling water.

Cook and finish

  1. Drop in the rice and boil for about 13 minutes, testing for tenderness.

  2. Strain the rice through a colander and rinse with cold water to separate the grains.

  3. Shake the colander and fluff the rice gently with a fork.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Patna rice
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into separate, tender grains as it absorbs water.
Lemon juice
Adds a light acidity that brightens the flavor of the plain rice.

The step that matters

Testing for tenderness during the boil. Rice cooked in rapidly boiling water can overcook quickly, turning soft and sticky. Tasting a grain near the stated time helps catch it when it is tender but still firm in the centre.

“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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