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A rice flour batter used to thicken soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,611 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickener

  1. Sift the rice flour through a fine sieve.

  2. Blend the rice flour with salt, spices, and catsup or wine.

  3. Gradually add liquid to achieve a smooth batter consistency. Beat with the back of a spoon until lumps disappear.

Thicken the soup

  1. Stir the thickening into boiling soup and simmer for 10 minutes.

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 + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rice + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,223 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Flour + winetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Starch that swells when heated in liquid, thickening the soup without adding wheat gluten.

The step that matters

Beat the batter smooth before adding it to the soup. Rice flour clumps when it meets liquid unevenly. Adding liquid gradually and beating out lumps first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps in the soup.

“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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