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Steamed Rice in the Fikeless Cooker

A dish of Carolina rice steamed in a fireless cooker with butter and served with fried peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Steamed Rice in the Fikeless Cooker

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice in a strainer under running water.

  2. Shake the rice into 3 cups of boiling water with salt added, then bring the mixture to a boil.

Steam

  1. Transfer the boiling rice to a fireless cooker with several quarts of boiling water underneath.

  2. Let it cook for one hour, or up to three hours for best results.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, add butter in small pieces and lightly turn the rice with a fork.

  2. Serve immediately on a hot platter, surrounded by fried peppers.

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

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

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Forms the body of the dish as its starch gelatinizes and the grains soften during steaming.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that keeps the cooked grains from clumping.

The step that matters

Holding the rice in the fireless cooker. Rice held in a steady, low-heat environment for a long time absorbs water gradually and becomes tender without scorching. Letting it stay too briefly can leave grains firm, while the timing range in the record gives the grains room to fully soften.

“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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