Skip to main content

Rice Favourites

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Favourites

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare rice as for curry.

  2. Mix in enough rich white sauce to make the rice moist, similar to ordinary bread sauce.

  3. Grease small china vases and layer strips of hot boiled ham seasoned with French mustard, cayenne, and chutney.

  4. Fill the vases with the rice, ensuring it stands above the edge.

  5. Pour a teaspoon of sauce made from equal parts cream and tomato pulp over the rice, coloring it pale pink with cochineal.

  6. Add a ring of shredded cooked white vegetable moistened with cream between the sauce and ham.

  7. Dust with coralline pepper and top with tiny sprigs of fried parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sauce, ham, mustard, pepper, cream, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sauce, ham, mustard, pepper, cream, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like