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Rice Sauce

A sauce made from soaked rice, milk, allspice, and onion, simmered until tender and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the rice in water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the soaked rice, milk, allspice, and onion.

  2. Simmer until the rice is tender.

  3. Remove the allspice and rub the mixture through a sieve into a clean stewpan.

  4. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more milk and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a sauceboat or over boiled turkey and fowl.

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

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

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Rice + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the sauce as it simmers and breaks down into a smooth body when sieved.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds richness and body.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and flavor to the milk as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer until the rice is tender. Rice must cook fully so it softens enough to be rubbed through a sieve. Undercooked grains leave a grainy sauce, and milk left at a hard simmer can scorch on the pan base.

Swap the allspice

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

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

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