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Italian Rice

A simple tomato-based rice dish cooked with olive oil, onion, green peppers, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Italian Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat olive oil in a pan and fry the chopped onion until golden brown.

  2. Add the dry rice and brown it slightly.

  3. Stir in the canned tomatoes, chopped green peppers, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover and simmer slowly for about 45 minutes, stirring as little as possible, until the rice is tender.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rice + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry rice
Forms the body of the dish, absorbing tomato liquid and becoming tender as it simmers.
Canned tomatoes
Supply the liquid that the rice absorbs as it cooks, along with acidity and flavor.
Olive oil
Carries the flavor of the onion and helps the rice brown lightly at the start.
Chopped onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness as it browns in the oil.

The step that matters

Simmer covered with minimal stirring. Covering traps steam so the rice cooks evenly in the tomato liquid. Stirring often releases starch from the grains, which can make the rice gummy and uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, olive, tomato, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, olive, tomato, pepper. 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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