Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with onions, tomatoes, vegetable stock, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and tomatoes, and fry until well browned.

  3. In a separate pot, combine the browned mixture with the vegetable stock and seasoning.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in the rice and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed the stock.

  3. Serve with grated cheese on top.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Onions
Soften and brown to build sweetness and savory depth in the base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that flavor the rice as it cooks.
Rice
Absorbs the stock as it simmers, setting the dish's final texture.
Vegetable stock
Supplies the liquid the rice absorbs while cooking.

The step that matters

Fry the onions and tomatoes until well browned. Browning develops deeper, sweeter flavors through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Pale mixtures produce a flat-tasting rice, so the base needs real color before the liquid goes in.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, rice, butter. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes