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Sauce

Plain White Sauce

A simple sauce made by boiling rice in milk, then mashing and seasoning with lime peel, mace, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the rice with lime peel in the milk until tender.

  2. Remove the lime peel and mash the mixture smooth through a sieve.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan with the mace and bring to a boil.

Season and serve

  1. Remove the mace, season with salt and cayenne, and serve hot.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + limetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Clean white rice
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks and mashes, giving the sauce body.
New milk
Forms the liquid base, and its proteins and fat give the sauce richness and a smooth texture.
Lime peel
Infuses the milk with a bright citrus aroma while it cooks.
Mace
Steeps into the milk, adding a warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Bringing the sieved sauce back to a boil. Milk proteins and starch can scorch on the base of the pan and boil over quickly. Stirring constantly and watching closely keeps the sauce smooth and prevents a burnt taste.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, lime, pepper):

  1. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  2. Corianderbetter flavor fit
  3. Turmericbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, lime, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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