Name: An Edging for Hashes
Ingredients: 2 cups rice; butter; coarse sea salt; 1 egg yolk

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

An Edging for Hashes

Ingredients

2 cups rice
butter
coarse sea salt
1 egg yolk

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

Boil the rice in water for 30 minutes.
Season the rice with a little butter and coarse sea salt.

Shape and bake

Form the rice into a ring shape on a dish, about 3 to 4 inches high.
Brush the top with the egg yolk.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

Serve

Once browned, fill the center with hash.

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.

Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,350 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the bulk of the ring and sets into a firm, sliceable structure as it cooks and dries.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the rice brown in the oven.
Egg yolk: Brushed on top, it enriches the surface and promotes a glossy, golden browning.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned. Browning depends on surface dryness and heat. Baking until golden develops flavour through the Maillard reaction, but overbaking can dry the rice and the egg glaze, so watch colour closely rather than relying only on time.

“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.