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Tomato Rice

A dish of rice cooked in tomato juice and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato liquid

  1. Scald the tomatoes and pass them through a colander to extract the juice and pulp.

  2. Add the juice and pulp to 1 quart of boiling water, then season with salt and pepper.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash and drain the rice, then place it in a pan with ½ pound of butter.

  2. Stir the butter and rice over gentle heat until the rice absorbs the butter.

  3. Add the rice to the tomato juice, cover, and simmer slowly until the rice is cooked and each kernel is separate.

Serve

  1. Melt the remaining 1 pound of butter in a pan until golden brown.

  2. Serve the rice topped with the melted 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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juice and pulp that flavour and colour the cooking liquid.
Rice
Forms the body of the dish, absorbing the tomato liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the rice grains and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly, covered. Gentle, covered simmering lets the rice absorb the liquid evenly and cook through without scorching at the bottom of the pan, keeping the grains separate.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, rice, butter. 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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