Name: Rice Spanish
Ingredients: 3 pints water; 4 slices bacon, cut fine; 2 tomatoes or ⅓ can tomatoes; 1 small red pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup rice

Why it works: Tomato and rice 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 Spanish

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, bring 3 pints of water to a boil.
Add 4 slices of finely cut bacon, 2 tomatoes (or ⅓ can), 1 small red pepper, and ¼ teaspoon salt, then boil for 20 minutes.
Wash 1 cup of rice and add it to the pot.
Boil until the rice is done.

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.

Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Bacon: Renders fat into the water and adds savory, smoky flavor to the broth.
Tomatoes: Add acidity and moisture, colouring and flavouring the cooking liquid.
Rice: Absorbs the flavoured liquid as it cooks, becoming tender and taking on the seasoning.