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Rice Soup, Italian Style

A savory soup of rice, onion, pork fat, and chicken consommé, topped with grated Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Rice Soup, Italian Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash and parboil the rice, then immerse it in cold water and drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, lightly fry the sliced onion with the fat pork until it is not browned.

  2. Add the rice and season with salt and red pepper, cooking for two minutes while stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Add the chicken consommé and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer for twenty minutes.

  4. Skim the soup and serve with grated Parmesan cheese.

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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Rice + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Provides the body of the soup and thickens it slightly as the starch releases during simmering.
Fat pork
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the onion a rich base for frying.
White onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the fat.
Chicken consommé
Forms the liquid base, giving the soup its main savoury flavour.
Parmesan cheese
Adds salty, nutty flavour when grated over the finished soup.

The step that matters

Frying the onion and pork without browning. Keeping the onion pale and gently softened avoids bitter, caramelised notes and keeps the broth clean-tasting. Browning would change the flavour the consommé is meant to carry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pork, pepper, chicken, parmesan cheese):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pork, pepper, chicken, parmesan cheese. 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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