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American Rice

A simple skillet dish of cooked rice, ham, green pepper, tomato, and salt.

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 ↓

American Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large skillet, combine the cooked rice, ground ham, green pepper, and tomato.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until warmed through.

  3. Season with salt to taste.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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. Rice + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Ham + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the flavors of the other ingredients.
Ground ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a meaty texture throughout the rice.
Green pepper
Contributes fresh, slightly bitter aroma and crisp-tender texture when warmed.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture that lightly coat the rice grains.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, ham, 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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