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Tomato Rice

A rice dish cooked with milk, tomato puree, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato 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 ↓

Tomato Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Cook the rice in the milk until soft.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the tomato puree to the rice and beat until smooth.

  2. Stir in the butter.

  3. Serve hot, with or without grated 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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch from the rice softens and thickens the milk, giving the dish its body.
Milk
Cooks the rice and gives a soft, creamy moisture to the dish.
Tomato puree
Adds tomato flavour, colour and acidity to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Cook the rice in the milk until soft. Milk sugars and proteins scorch easily on the base of a pan, and rice keeps absorbing liquid as it cooks, so the mixture can catch and stick if left unattended.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, pepper, butter, 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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