Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Rice and Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the rice
Boil the rice in the milk until tender, then drain it in a sieve and let it cool.
Combine and sweeten
Whip the cream until soft peaks form.
Mix the whipped cream with the cooled rice.
Add the sherry and sweeten to taste with caster sugar.
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.
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,479 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
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Rice + sherrytop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together572 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
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Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Softens as it simmers in milk and gives the dish its body and bulk.
- Milk
- Liquid that cooks the rice, leaving it soft and moist.
- Cream
- Fat that traps air when whipped, giving a light, creamy texture.
- Sherry
- Adds aroma and a rich, wine-like flavour.
The step that matters
Let the rice cool before mixing it with the cream. Warm rice would melt the fat foam of the whipped cream, causing it to deflate and turn loose and runny instead of light and airy.
“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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