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Spanish Rice

A buttery tomato rice dish flavored with sugar, salt, pepper, pimento, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the tomatoes and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the boiled rice, sugar, salt, pepper, pimento, and baking soda. Mix well and let come to a boil again.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browning in the pan adds a nutty, rich flavor to the base.
Tomatoes
Provide liquid and acidity that give the rice its sauce and tangy flavor.
Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and soaks up the tomato liquid.
Baking soda
Raises the pH slightly, which can deepen the color of the tomato mixture.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Mix well and let come to a boil again. Reheating the rice in the tomato liquid lets it absorb flavor and heat evenly. Brief boiling helps the baking soda react and the mixture thicken slightly, so it should be stirred to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, sugar, 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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