Name: Rice Water
Ingredients: 1 oz. of unpolished rice; 1 quart of cold water; flavoring (lemon peel, cloves, or other spices)

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 ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

1 oz. of unpolished rice
1 quart of cold water
flavoring (lemon peel, cloves, or other spices)

Directions

Prepare the rice

Wash the rice well with cold water.
Soak the rice in 1 quart of tepid water for about 3 hours.

Boil and finish

Slowly boil the mixture for about 1 hour.
Strain the liquid.
Add your choice of flavoring.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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

Unpolished rice: Its starch dissolves into the water, giving the liquid body and a mild thickness.
Flavoring: Lemon peel or spices add aroma to the otherwise plain rice liquid.

“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.