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Rice Jambalaya

A spicy rice dish with pork, sausage, ham, and vegetables simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Rice Jambalaya

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the onion and pork, and brown until light brown.

  3. Stir in the ham and other seasonings; brown together for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the sausage and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in the hot water or soup stock and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the washed rice and boil for 30 minutes or until firm.

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. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 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
Absorbs the stock as it cooks, becoming tender and giving the dish its body.
Pork
Browning adds savory depth, and it releases flavor into the broth as it cooks.
Sausage
Renders fat and flavor into the pot, seasoning the rice and broth as it cooks.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, building the aromatic base of the dish.
Ham
Adds smoky, salty flavor that carries through the rice as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the pork, onion and ham. Browning creates deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale or crowded meat will steam instead and the dish will taste flat. Brown in batches if the pot is crowded.

Swap the clove

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

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

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