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Syrian Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with butter, tomato, and water.

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

Syrian Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped tomato, water, and salt to taste.

  3. When it boils, add the washed rice.

  4. Let it boil hard for a few minutes, stirring well.

  5. Then reduce the heat to low, cover tightly, and cook for about 1 hour without stirring.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs the liquid and softens into the body of the dish.
Tomato
Adds acidity and moisture that flavours the rice as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavour through the grains.

The step that matters

Covered simmer without stirring. Once the heat is low and the pan covered, lifting the lid or stirring releases steam and breaks grains, which can leave the rice unevenly cooked and gummy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice. 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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