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Cream of Rice Soup

A creamy soup made with rice, stock, onion, celery, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Wash the rice carefully.

  2. Cook the rice for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the stock, onion, and celery to the rice and cook slowly for another 30 minutes, until the rice is very soft.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  5. Add seasoning.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cream or milk and heat just to a boil.

  2. If using milk, stir in the tablespoon of butter.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks down and softens, giving body to the purée.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Chicken stock
Provides the main liquid and savory base for the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded flavor when milk is used instead of cream.

The step that matters

Add the cream or milk and heat just to a boil. Dairy can curdle or scorch if overheated, so bring it just to a boil and do not let it keep boiling hard, which would separate the milk proteins and dull the texture.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, rice, cream, onion, pepper, butter, milk):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, rice, cream, onion, pepper, butter, 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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