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Salad

Sour Rice Salad

A rice salad with shrimp, herbs, and a tangy dressing.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 961 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: soy, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

  • Dressing
  • Salad

Directions

Prepare the garnish

  1. Thinly slice the shallots from the salad ingredients list.

  2. Drop them in a small pan of vegetable oil heated to medium.

  3. Fry till light brown – careful here, they'll go from golden to overdone in the blink of an eye.

  4. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towel. Set aside.

Make the dressing

  1. In a mortar and pestle, pound the shrimp to a pulp.

  2. Add and pound together the shallots, garlic, and chili peppers, if using. Add the belacan and pound it as well, then the tomatoes/tomato wedge.

  3. Mix in lime juice.

  4. Add the fish sauce 1/2 Tbsp at a time; taste dressing after the first 1/2 Tbsp, you may not want to add the other.

  5. Add black pepper to taste and try the dressing again – more kalamansi juice will be in order if your tomatoes were exceptionally sweet, or if you're after a real pucker.

Prepare the herbs

  1. Pick leaves from mint and basil sprigs, and chop these very finely together with the coriander.

  2. Pick the leaves from the daun kesom stem and chop a bit less finely.

  3. Remove the hard outer layers from the lemongrass stalks, quarter them lengthwise, and slice thinly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix rice and dressing.

  2. Add torch ginger, coriander‑mint‑basil, daun kesom, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and sour spinach or sorrel. Mix again.

  3. Allow the rice to stand and absorb the flavors of the herbs and the dressing for about 1/2 hour.

  4. Serve topped with fried shallots.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shrimp + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together961 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  2. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + limetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shrimp + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,546 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the salad and soaks up the dressing and herb flavours.
Fish sauce
Adds savoury saltiness that rounds out the sour dressing.
Kalamansi juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sour flavour of the salad.
Dried shrimp
Contributes concentrated savoury depth to the dressing.
Sour spinach or sorrel
Adds leafy texture and a further sour, tangy note.

The step that matters

Fry the shallots until light brown. Shallots go from golden to bitter-burnt very quickly, and burnt shallots taste acrid. Pulling them out at light brown lets residual heat finish the colour while keeping them sweet and crisp.

Flavor stand-ins for the cherry tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, orange, lime, garlic, fish sauce, shallot, pepper):

  1. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  2. Mangobetter flavor fit
  3. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  4. Cherry tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, orange, lime, garlic, fish sauce, shallot, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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