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Bice and Nut Toast

A toast topped with a cheese and rice sauce mixed with nuts and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Bice and Nut Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour, then gradually add the milk while stirring constantly.

  3. Cook until thickened, then add the cheese and stir until melted.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the cooked rice and chopped nuts, seasoning with salt.

  2. Serve the mixture on buttered toast, ensuring it does not boil after adding the cheese.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
American cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it a creamy, savoury body.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture to the mixture.
Chopped nuts
Adds crunch and a toasted, nutty flavour.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil after adding the cheese. High heat can make melted cheese turn grainy and oily, and can cause the sauce to separate. Keeping it warm and stirring gently keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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