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Rice, with Parsley or Chives

A simple side dish of rice cooked with butter, parsley or chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,762 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice, with Parsley or Chives

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the rice in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Add butter and parsley or chives.

  3. Mix gently to avoid breaking the grains.

  4. Serve as a vegetable.

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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Rice + buttertop 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

Blanched rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its starchy, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that keeps the grains moist.
Parsley or chives
Adds fresh herbal aroma and a touch of green colour.

The step that matters

Mix gently to avoid breaking the grains. Cooked rice grains are soft and fragile. Stirring vigorously breaks them open and releases surface starch, which makes the rice gummy and mushy instead of separate and fluffy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter. 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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