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Rice with Watercress

Rice with watercress is a layered dish of cooked rice and sautéed watercress topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice with Watercress

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 cup of rice in salted water until tender, then drain and let steam for 5 minutes.

  2. Wash, dry, and break 2 bunches of watercress.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fry the watercress in 1 tablespoon of butter until crisp.

  2. In a deep dish, arrange the rice and watercress in alternate layers, with rice on top and bottom.

  3. Scatter grated cheese over the last layer.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Rice + watercresstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Watercress + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together842 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gives it a tender, starchy body.
Watercress
Adds a peppery flavour and, when fried, a crisp texture against the soft rice.
Butter
Fat for frying the watercress, carrying flavour and helping it crisp and brown.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns over the top layer, adding savoury richness.

The step that matters

Frying the watercress until crisp. Watercress wilts and releases moisture quickly, so it must be fried in hot butter just until crisp. Overcooking makes it limp and soggy, and it then loses the textural contrast with the rice.

“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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