Name: Rice and Cheese Savoury, Cabbage and Bean Gravy
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 1 oz cheese; 2 tablespoons margarine; ½ cup beans; ½ cup cabbage; 1½ cups bread; ⅓ cup currants; ⅓ cup sugar; ½ cup milk

Why it works: Rice and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice and Cheese Savoury, Cabbage and Bean Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice and cheese

Cook the rice according to package instructions.
Melt the margarine in a pan, add the cheese, and stir until melted.
Mix the cooked rice with the melted cheese.

Make the gravy

Cook the beans and cabbage in another pot until tender.

Serve

Serve the rice and cheese mixture with the bean and cabbage gravy on top.
Serve bread and currants sprinkled with sugar and milk as dessert.

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.

Rice + beanstop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,017 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Beans + cabbagetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 savory dish, absorbing the melted cheese and giving it body.
Cheese: Melts into the rice, adding richness, fat and savory flavor.
Margarine: Fat that melts first and carries the cheese smoothly into the rice.
Beans: Provide the main substance of the gravy, adding body and earthy flavor.
Cabbage: Softens during cooking, adding bulk, mild sweetness and texture to the gravy.
Bread: Provides starchy structure for the dessert course.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese, beans, cabbage, bread, sugar, milk):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Applefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, beans, cabbage, bread, sugar, 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.