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Creamed Peanuts and Rice

A baked casserole of rice, peanuts, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and peanut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Creamed Peanuts and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice according to package instructions.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the fat and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens.

Combine and bake

  1. Combine the cooked rice, chopped peanuts, paprika, and salt with the white sauce.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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 + peanuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Peanut + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gives it a soft, starchy body.
Peanuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce when cooked with the fat.
Milk
Forms the creamy sauce that binds the rice and peanuts together.
Fat
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms the roux that starts the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding milk gradually while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, 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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