Name: Rice a Lttalienne
Ingredients: 4 ounces rice; 1 ounce butter; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Tomato sauce (sufficient to moisten); 2 ounces finely grated cheese

Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,990 recipes mention both. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Boil the rice until cooked, then drain it.
Stir in the butter, salt, and pepper, mixing thoroughly.
Add enough tomato sauce to moisten the rice.
Mix in the finely grated cheese.
Serve very hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Rice + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,990 recipes

Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + cheesetop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,955 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together17,913 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cheesetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,892 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rice + cheesetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together937 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 absorbs the butter and sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the grains for a smooth texture.
Tomato sauce: Moistens the rice and adds acidity and savory flavour.
Finely grated cheese: Adds saltiness and fat, and melts slightly into the warm rice.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

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

Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
Tomatothe original
Potatoabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, pepper, sauce, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.