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Macaroni Rice

A thick paste of rice and macaroni cooked with milk, cheese, pepper, salt, and optional allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the rice in cold water and boil gently for 2 hours until it becomes a thick paste.

  2. Add the milk, cheese, pepper, salt, and allspice if using.

  3. Boil the mixture slowly for another hour until ready to eat.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch thickens as it cooks, turning the rice into a thick, paste-like body.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the thick rice paste into a smooth dish.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness from its fat and proteins.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice gently until it forms a thick paste. Gentle heat lets the rice grains soften and release starch slowly, which thickens the mixture evenly. Boiling hard can scorch the bottom and leave some grains firm.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cheese, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cheese, 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.

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