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Drink

Rice Water

Rice water is a sweetened beverage made by boiling rice with cinnamon and straining the liquid.

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

  1. Wash the rice well.

  2. Put the rice into a stewpan with boiling water.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the cinnamon stick and boil for 1 hour until the rice becomes a pulp.

  2. Remove from heat and strain the rice water into a basin.

  3. Sweeten to taste with caster sugar.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 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).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Rice
Starch released as it boils gives the water body and a thin, slightly thickened texture.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the water as it steeps during boiling.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness, added at the end so the cook can adjust to taste.

The step that matters

Boiling until the rice becomes a pulp. The rice must break down fully over the hour so its starch thickens the water. Stopping early leaves a thin, grainy liquid, while the long simmer releases the starch that gives the drink its body.

“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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