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Rice and Nut Rarebit

A cheese sauce with rice and nuts served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice and Nut Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth.

  4. Add the cheese and stir until melted.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the boiled rice and chopped nuts.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve the mixture on toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it flavour and a creamy texture.
Boiled rice
Adds body and bulk to the sauce, giving the mixture a heartier texture.
Chopped nuts
Adds crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps that are hard to smooth out later.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, rice, 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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