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Baked Rice and Tomatoes

A baked rice dish cooked with tomatoes, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water for 12 to 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice using a colander.

  3. Place the rice in a steamer for 1 hour until dry and fluffy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Boil the tomatoes.

  2. Pour the boiled tomatoes over the rice.

  3. Add butter, coarse sea salt, and black pepper to taste.

  4. Bake until brown.

  5. 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. Rice + tomatotop 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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 sets into a firm base as it dries and bakes.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that brighten the rice and help it brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and the flavour round out.

The step that matters

Steaming the rice until dry and fluffy. Rice that stays wet will turn gummy and steam rather than brown in the oven. Draining and steaming drive off surface moisture so the grains stay separate and the top can take on colour.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, 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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