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Spanish Rice

A skillet dish of bacon, onion, rice, green pepper, bouillon, and tomatoes cooked slowly.

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

Prepare

  1. Brown the bacon in a skillet.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until soft.

  3. Wash and dry the rice, then fry it in the skillet until slightly brown.

Simmer

  1. Stir in salt and chopped green pepper.

  2. Add the bouillon and tomatoes.

  3. Cook slowly 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the bouillon and tomato liquid as it cooks, giving the dish its body and texture.
Bacon
Renders fat into the skillet for frying the onion and rice, adding savory flavour.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the flavour base of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, contributing colour and tangy flavour to the rice.
Bouillon
Supplies the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs as it simmers.
Green pepper
Adds a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and texture to the rice.

The step that matters

Fry the rice until slightly brown. Toasting dry rice in fat before adding liquid develops nutty flavour and helps the grains stay separate. Rice washed and dried first will brown evenly rather than steam.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, tomato. 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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