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Fried Rice

Fried rice slices seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in cornmeal, and deep‑fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice as directed in a recipe for boiled rice and let it cool in a dish.

  2. Once cold, turn the rice out, and cut it into slices nearly 1 inch thick.

  3. Season the slices with salt and pepper, then roll them in Indian meal.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a frying kettle until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the rice slices in the hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Remove the fried rice with a skimmer and place it on brown paper to drain excess grease.

  4. Serve 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + peppertop 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

Boiled rice
Forms the firm body of the slices once cooled and cut, holding its shape during frying.
Indian meal (cornmeal)
Coats the slices, creating a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the rice cool fully before slicing and coating. Cold rice holds together and firms up, so the slices keep their shape. Warm rice is soft and crumbly and can fall apart in the hot oil.

“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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