Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Rice Sour

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

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

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 Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

Make the soup

  1. Add the rice, onion, and celery to the chicken stock.

  2. Cook slowly for 2 hours without boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Stir in the seasoning and the cream or milk, which should be heated to just boiling.

  2. If using milk, add the 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
Breaks down during slow cooking to thicken the stock into a smooth, starchy body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the finished soup.
Chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and cooks the rice.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel when milk is used.

The step that matters

Cook slowly without boiling. Rising to a hard boil can scorch the rice on the bottom and make the starch cook unevenly. A gentle simmer lets the rice soften fully so it thickens the stock evenly.

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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes