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Rice-balls Garnished with Cranberries

Rice balls served with a drizzle of very sweet cranberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Rice and cranberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 37 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice-balls Garnished with Cranberries

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and shape

  1. Boil the rice until tender.

  2. Mold the rice in cups.

Serve

  1. Serve each person one rice ball in a saucer.

  2. Pour 1 to 2 tablespoons of very sweet cranberry sauce over each rice ball.

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 + cranberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

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

  2. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cranberry + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the dish; cooked grains soften and hold together when packed into a shape.
Very sweet cranberry sauce
Adds sweetness and moisture over the rice balls.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cranberrythe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sauce. 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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