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Boiled Rice, with Sauce

Boiled rice served with a sauce of drawn butter, beaten egg, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato 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 ↓

Boiled Rice, with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in just enough water to cover it for 1 hour.

  2. In a farina kettle, combine the soaked rice and weak gravy.

  3. Cook until the rice is soft, shaking from the bottom occasionally without stirring.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Heap the cooked rice in a deep dish.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the drawn butter with the beaten egg and tomato sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the rice before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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; soaking and slow cooking soften the grains until tender.
Weak gravy
Liquid that cooks the rice, adding savoury flavour as the grains absorb it.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Beaten egg
Thickens the sauce gently and adds body when combined with the butter.
Tomato sauce
Contributes acidity and tomato flavour to the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, ham, butter, egg, sauce. 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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