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Buttered Rice

A simple dish of boiled rice flavored with butter, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Buttered Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Add the rice to boiling water with salt and boil for 20 minutes until softened.

  2. Drain the rice in a colander and place it in an open oven to dry.

Finish and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter and add the grated onion, stirring until it sizzles.

  2. Add the dried rice to the hot butter, toss lightly for 1 minute, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Serve in a deep dish.

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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Raw rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; its starch softens during boiling to give the grains their body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the grains and carrying flavour as they are tossed.
Grated onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour as it sizzles in the hot butter.

The step that matters

Drying the rice before tossing. Excess surface water would cool the hot butter and steam the grains instead of letting them coat and toss lightly. Draining well and drying in the oven helps the grains stay separate and absorb the butter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, pepper. 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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