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Tomato Pilace

A tomato-based rice dish cooked with lard, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomato Pilace

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Combine tomatoes, lard, salt, and pepper in a frying pan.

  2. Cook until thick.

Cook the pilaf

  1. Add washed rice and water to a saucepan.

  2. Pour in the cooked tomatoes.

  3. Cook until rice is tender and grains are separate, stirring occasionally.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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
Provide the main flavor and moisture, which thicken into a sauce that coats the rice.
Rice
Forms the body of the dish, absorbing liquid and cooking to tender, separate grains.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavor and helps keep the rice grains separate.

The step that matters

Cook until rice is tender and grains are separate. Rice needs enough liquid to hydrate fully, and stirring only occasionally keeps the starch from clumping and sticking to the pan. Too little liquid leaves the grains firm, while too much makes the dish soggy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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