Name: Apricot Rice
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; ½ cup preserved or canned apricots; 2 tablespoons butter or ½ cup hot cream

Why it works: Rice and apricot work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 353 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot Rice

Ingredients

1 cup rice
½ cup preserved or canned apricots
2 tablespoons butter or ½ cup hot cream

Directions

Boil the rice in water until tender.
Drain the apricots and add them to the rice.
Stir in the butter or hot cream and mix well.
Serve with lean meat, eggs, or 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.

Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together353 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).
Apricot + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,458 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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

Rice: Forms the starchy base of the dish.
Apricots: Add fruity sweetness and a light tartness.
Butter or hot cream: Adds fat and richness, keeping the rice moist and smooth.