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Breakfast

A Nice Breakfast Dish

A casserole of cold rice, cold meat, milk, egg, and seasonings baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Nice Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Season the chopped cold meat and place it on a platter.

  2. If convenient, wet the meat with gravy.

Assemble

  1. In a bowl, combine cold rice, milk, egg, pepper, and salt.

  2. If the rice is insufficient, add powdered bread crumbs.

  3. Spread the rice mixture thickly around the platter.

Bake

  1. Heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven until warmed and browned.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold rice
Forms the bulk of the coating and gives the casserole its body.
Egg
Binds the rice mixture so it holds together when heated.
Milk
Adds moisture to the rice mixture so it stays soft rather than dry.
Chopped cold meat
Provides the savory main filling beneath the rice layer.
Powdered bread crumbs
Absorbs extra moisture and helps the rice mixture hold together when more binding is needed.

The step that matters

Spreading the rice mixture thickly. A thick, even layer of rice protects the meat from drying out in the oven and helps the top brown well. Thin spots can dry out or scorch while the egg sets the binder.

“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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