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Drink

Rice Water

Rice water is a beverage made by soaking and boiling rice, then straining and adding flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Rice Water

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice well with cold water.

  2. Soak the rice in 1 quart of tepid water for about 3 hours.

Cook and finish

  1. Slowly boil the rice in the soaking water for about 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add flavoring as desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Unpolished rice
Its starch dissolves into the water, giving the liquid body and a light, slightly thick texture.

The step that matters

Slowly boil the rice in the soaking water. A gentle boil lets starch and flavor release into the water without the rice scorching on the bottom of the pan or breaking apart. A hard boil can burn the grains and make the liquid cloudy and harsh.

“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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