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Spanish Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the poultry or bacon fat in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the washed rice, chopped onions, and minced garlic; fry for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped red pepper (or pimento or paprika) and tomatoes.

  4. Add the salt and cook slowly for about 1 hour.

  5. As water evaporates, add more water to prevent burning.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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 absorbs liquid as it cooks, giving it body.
Poultry or bacon fat
Carries flavor and coats the rice grains so they fry rather than clump.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they fry, building the savory base of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that cooks into the rice, coloring and flavoring it.

The step that matters

Adding water during the long simmer. As liquid evaporates, the rice can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Adding water as needed keeps the grains cooking gently and prevents the sugars and starches from burning.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, garlic, pepper, tomato. 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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