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Riced Tomatoes

A tomato-based rice dish with olives, peppers, onion, celery, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Riced Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Rub the tomatoes through a fine sieve.

  2. Heat the sieved tomatoes in a saucepan for 10 minutes.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

  2. Set on a brisk fire and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Then simmer very slowly for 1¼ hours until the mixture is thoroughly blended.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Olive + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

Rice
Absorbs the tomato liquid as it simmers, becoming tender and giving the dish its body.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that cook the rice and give the dish its main flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens into the mixture.
Celery
Adds a crisp, aromatic vegetable flavour that softens during the long simmer.
Green peppers
Add fresh, slightly bitter flavour and some texture to the finished dish.
Olives
Add salty, briny flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Simmering very slowly. A gentle simmer lets the rice absorb liquid evenly and soften without scorching on the bottom or breaking the grains apart. A brisk boil for too long can burn the base and leave the rice unevenly cooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, olive, pepper, celery, 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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