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Drink

Rice Water

Rice water is a beverage made by boiling rice with cinnamon, then sweetening and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Rice Water

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the rice well.

  2. Add the rice to boiling water along with the cinnamon stick, then boil gently for two hours.

Sweeten and strain

  1. Add sugar to taste and strain the mixture.

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.

  1. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Carolina rice
Its starch leaches into the water, giving the drink body and a light, cloudy texture.
Cinnamon stick
Releases warm, sweet aromatic compounds into the liquid during the long simmer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, added after cooking so the cook can adjust it to taste.

The step that matters

Boil gently for two hours. A gentle simmer lets starch and flavour move slowly into the water without the rice breaking apart or the liquid reducing too fast. A hard rolling boil can scorch the bottom of the pot and cook off too much water.

“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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