Skip to main content
Main

Baked Rice

A baked rice dish cooked with gravy, tomatoes, and seasoned with paprika and celery salt, topped with cracker crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Rice

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.

Cook the rice

  1. Add salt to the boiling water, then add gravy and rice.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until the rice is nearly tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and dust it with cracker crumbs.

  2. Add the rice mixture, seasonings, and tomato juice to the dish.

  3. Cover with remaining cracker crumbs and bits of butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Turn out of the pan and serve hot with broiled lamb chops.

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. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  4. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, absorbing the liquid as it cooks until tender.
Chicken gravy or beef cubes
Adds savory flavor and salt-rich depth to the cooked rice.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top and line the dish during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crust brown during baking.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity, color, and moisture to the rice mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until nearly tender, not fully soft. Rice keeps absorbing liquid and softening in the oven, so stopping the cook just short of tender prevents a mushy result after baking.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Corianderfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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

More baked rice recipes

Pudding 88Curry 6with Tomatoes 5 See all 18 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes