Name: Cherry Rice
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 2 cups water; 1 tablespoon sugar (optional); 1 cup ripe black cherries or canned cherries (without juice); Butter (to taste); 1 egg yolk (optional)

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cherry Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Boil the rice in 2 cups of water until each grain bursts.
Add the cherries and sugar while boiling, if desired.

Finish and serve

Mix in butter and the egg yolk if using, to balance the acidity of the cherries.
Serve with sterilized cream or nuts at the end of the meal.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,744 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 that swells and softens as it boils in the water.
Cherries: Provide the fruit flavour and acidity that the butter and egg yolk soften.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the cooked rice.
Egg yolk: Adds richness and helps bind the butter into a creamier texture.

“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.