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Peppers and Rice

A baked dish of steamed rice topped with sautéed green pepper slices and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peppers and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Steam the rice until tender and whole.

Prepare the peppers

  1. Slice the green peppers crosswise.

  2. Remove the seeds from the pepper slices.

  3. Soak the pepper slices in salted water for 1 hour.

  4. Dry the pepper slices.

  5. Dip the pepper slices in flour.

Fry and bake

  1. Fry the pepper slices in hot butter until soft and slightly brown, about 5 minutes.

  2. Transfer the rice to a baking dish.

  3. Arrange the pepper slices on top of the rice.

  4. Pour the remaining butter over the dish.

  5. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 as a tender, starchy base under the peppers.
Green peppers
Provide the main vegetable flavor and a soft, tender texture when fried and baked.
Flour
Coats the pepper slices so they brown more evenly and hold the butter during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and richness, and helps the peppers brown and carry flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the pepper slices in hot butter. Frying over high enough heat browns the flour coating and softens the peppers. If the butter is too cool, the slices steam and turn greasy instead of golden.

“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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