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Spanish Rice

A tomato, onion, and chili flavored rice cooked in butter and water.

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 ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Fry the rice in butter until it turns light brown.

  2. Pour water into the pan and boil the rice until soft.

Add the vegetables and finish

  1. Fry the onions, tomatoes, and chillies together.

  2. Add the fried mixture to the boiled rice just before removing from the stove.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

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

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs water as it boils until soft.
Butter
Fat that browns the rice lightly and adds richness.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth when fried until softened.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that flavour the rice as they cook down.
Chillies
Add heat and aroma to the fried mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the fried mixture to the boiled rice. Adding the mixture just before removing the pan from the stove keeps the rice from over-cooking and turning mushy, and lets the fried flavours stay distinct rather than fully breaking down.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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