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Rice with Tomato Sauce

A simple dish of boiled rice topped with tomato sauce, onion juice, butter, sugar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice as directed until dry.

  2. Transfer the rice to a serving dish.

Add the sauce

  1. Pour the strained tomato sauce over the rice.

  2. Add onion juice, pepper, salt, butter, and sugar to the sauce.

  3. Stir gently and lift the rice grains with a fork to mix.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 dish and absorbs the sauce as it sits.
Strained tomato sauce
Provides the main moisture and tomato flavour for the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomato.
Onion juice
Adds savoury, aromatic flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir gently and lift the rice grains with a fork to mix.. Cooked rice grains break and turn mushy when stirred hard. Gentle lifting keeps them whole while the sauce coats them evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, tomato, sauce, pepper, butter, sugar. 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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