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Rice Soup with Tomatoes

A tomato-based rice soup simmered with stock, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice 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 ↓

Rice Soup with Tomatoes

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 tomato base

  1. Remove the seeds from the tomatoes and stew them in a little water with the sliced onion.

  2. Rub the mixture through a colander.

Cook the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a pot, then add the tomatoes and rice, cooking for a few minutes while stirring.

  2. Add the stock and bring to a boil for five minutes.

  3. Cover the pot and place it in a preheated 400°F (200°C) oven for one hour.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Tomatoes
Provides the main body, acidity and fresh tomato flavor of the soup.
Rice
Its starch thickens the soup and gives it a creamier body as it cooks.
Stock
Serves as the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs and softens in.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and rounds out the taste of the tomatoes.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness as it softens while stewing with the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cover the pot before the oven. Covering the pot traps steam so the liquid cannot evaporate too quickly over the long bake. Without a lid, the soup can reduce too far, concentrate unevenly, or scorch on the bottom, while the rice may stay firm.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, rice. 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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