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Spanish Rice

A rice dish cooked with ham or bacon fat, onion, green pepper, tomatoes, and seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, topped with cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook rice in a double boiler according to package instructions.

Make the sauce

  1. In a skillet, heat ham or bacon fat over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped onion and green pepper, and fry slightly.

  3. Stir in chopped tomatoes and cook slowly until the mixture is smooth.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and allspice.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cooked rice and mix thoroughly.

  2. Top with grated cheese before serving.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 the flavours of the sauce.
Ham or bacon fat
Carries flavour into the pan and helps fry the vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.
Green pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and some texture.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and moisture that cook down into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the tomato mixture slowly until smooth. Slow cooking lets the tomatoes break down and release water while their flavour concentrates. Rushing leaves a thin, watery sauce that can make the rice soggy when mixed together.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, ham, onion, pepper, tomato, cheese):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, ham, onion, pepper, tomato, 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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