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Rice Soup

Rice Soup is a simple soup made with rice, water, tomato juice, olive oil, peanut butter, salt, and tomato ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the cleaned rice in water for one hour.

  2. Add the juice of the boiled tomatoes, olive oil, peanut butter, and salt.

  3. Boil for a few minutes.

  4. Flavor with tomato ketchup.

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. Rice + peanuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

  3. Rice + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Olive + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens as it cooks and releases starch, which thickens the soup and gives it body.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and bright tomato flavor.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives a smoother mouthfeel.
Peanut butter
Adds fat and richness, and thickens the broth slightly.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavor to finish the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice fully. Rice must cook long enough for its starch granules to gelatinize and soften. If it is undercooked, the grains stay firm and the soup does not thicken as it should.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, tomato, olive, butter, ketchup. 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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