Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Fried Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rice
Boil the rice as directed in a recipe for boiled rice and cool it in a dish.
Once cold, turn the rice out, and cut it into slices nearly 1 inch thick.
Season the slices with salt and pepper, then roll them in Indian meal.
Fry and serve
Heat oil in a frying kettle until smoking hot.
Fry the rice slices in the hot oil until golden brown.
Remove the rice from the oil with a skimmer and place it on brown paper to drain excess grease.
Serve hot.
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.
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Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 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
- Cooked rice
- Forms the body of the dish once chilled and sliced into firm pieces.
- Indian meal (cornmeal)
- Coating that crisps and browns in the hot oil, giving a crunchy surface.
The step that matters
Frying the rice slices in very hot oil. Oil must be smoking hot so the cornmeal coating sets and browns quickly. If the oil is cooler, the slices absorb more grease and become soggy instead of crisp.
“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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