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Rice Soup

A light soup made with stock, leeks, rice, milk, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine 2 quarts of stock from boiled fowl or veal.

  2. Optionally, add a boiled carrot and small turnip, then remove them later.

  3. Add the white part of the leeks, thinly sliced, and the washed rice.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Stir in the chopped parsley, milk, salt, and pepper.

  6. Boil for an additional 5 minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Leek + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together759 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Swells as it simmers, thickening the broth and giving the soup body.
Milk
Adds richness and softness, mellowing the flavor of the broth.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes after adding the rice. Rice needs a sustained simmer to become tender and release starch. Stopping early leaves it firm, while boiling too hard can break the grains apart and make the soup cloudy.

Swap the leek

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, parsley, pepper. 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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