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Another Receipt for Boiling Rice

A simple boiled rice prepared by washing, soaking, boiling, seasoning, and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Another Receipt for Boiling Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly in several waters and soak it for 1 hour.

  2. Bring a large pot of water to a fast boil.

Cook

  1. Add the soaked rice to the boiling water and leave it uncovered.

  2. Skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  3. Add salt when the rice is nearly done, about 15 to 18 minutes.

  4. For a richer flavor, add 2 ounces of fresh butter when the rice is nearly done.

Drain and dry

  1. Drain the rice well and heap it lightly in a dish.

  2. Place the dish in a gentle oven (300°F / 150°C) to dry.

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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; soaking and boiling soften the grains until tender.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a rounder flavor when stirred in near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Add salt when the rice is nearly done. Salt added too early can slow water uptake and toughen the grain surface, so it is best added late in cooking.

“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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