Name: Rice Soup with Tomatoes
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; 1 onion; ½ cup rice; 2 quarts stock; 2 tablespoons butter

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 ↓

Rice Soup with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

Stew the tomatoes with the sliced onion in a small amount of water.
Rub the mixture through a colander.

Cook the soup

Heat the butter in a pot.
Add the tomato mixture and the well-washed rice to the pot.
Pour in the heated stock.
Transfer to a cooker and cook for 1 hour.

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.

Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

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