Skip to main content
Main

Cream-of-rice Soup

A thick soup made with rice, water, milk, and seasonings, thickened with flour and Bovril.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream-of-rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. In a soup pot, combine water and rice, and bring to a boil.

  2. Tie the vegetables, spices, and herbs in a piece of netting and add to the pot.

  3. Cook gently for 2 hours.

  4. Stir in the Bovril and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a mixing bowl, removing the seasonings.

Finish the soup

  1. Rub the rice through the sieve and return the mixture to the pot.

  2. Add hot milk, salt, and pepper to the pot.

  3. In a frying pan, heat butter and add flour, stirring until smooth and frothy.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the soup and stir until it boils.

  5. Strain the soup again through a fine sieve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down when rubbed through the sieve, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soup.
Flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux that thickens the soup as it boils.
Bovril
Adds concentrated savory, meaty flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the soup. Flour thickens only when it is cooked in fat and then heated in liquid. If added lumpy or not stirred while it comes to a boil, it will clump and stay raw-tasting, so stir constantly until smooth and boiling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, onion, carrot, celery, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, onion, carrot, celery, clove, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipes