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Curried Rice

A rice dish cooked with curry powder, onion, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Curried Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Fry the onion in fat until light brown.

  3. Wash the rice, add it to the onion, and stir until the fat is absorbed.

Cook

  1. Add the curry, salt, and boiling water.

  2. Cook over the fire for 6 minutes.

  3. Transfer the mixture to the double boiler with hot milk.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes or until the rice is soft but not broken.

Serve

  1. Serve in a border with green peas in the center.

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. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 and softens as it absorbs liquid during cooking.
Fat
Coats the rice grains and carries the curry flavour when fried with the onion.
Onion
Fried until light brown to add savoury sweetness and aroma to the base.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness as the rice simmers, giving a creamy texture.
Curry powder
Provides the main spice aroma and flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Cook until the rice is soft but not broken. Rice grains absorb liquid and swell as they cook, so stirring too hard or cooking too long can break them and turn the dish mushy. Checking for tender grains with intact shape keeps the texture even.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk. 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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