Skip to main content
Main

Baked Rice with Tomatoes

A baked rice dish combined with tomatoes, onions, butter, and seasonings, served in a crumb-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and tomato 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 ↓

Baked Rice with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in water until tender.

  2. Mix the cooked rice with the can of tomatoes.

  3. Add the finely chopped onion, butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Line a well-buttered dish with bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Pour the rice mixture into the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and gives it a soft, starchy body once cooked.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that flavour the rice as it bakes.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens into the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp lining on the dish that adds texture and helps browning.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The rice mixture is already cooked, so baking mainly sets it and browns the surface. Stopping too early leaves it pale and loose, while baking too long can dry it out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes