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 ↓
Beef and Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the rice
Rinse the rice thoroughly.
Pour boiling water over the rice and add a pinch of salt.
Cook in a double boiler for 20 minutes.
Drain off all the water and cover tightly.
Cook for an additional 15 minutes.
Cook the steak and serve
Broil the steak for 1 minute over a very hot fire.
Press the juice from the steak over the hot boiled rice using a lemon squeezer.
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.
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Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Rice
- Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing water as it cooks to become tender.
- Tenderloin steak
- Provides the main protein, browned quickly by high heat for flavour.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rice and steak.
The step that matters
Drain off all the water and cover tightly. Removing excess water and then covering the pan lets the rice finish steaming evenly, so grains become tender rather than soggy or unevenly cooked.
“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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