Skip to main content
Starter

Riz a LA Menagere

A French rice dish cooked with bacon, broth, pepper, and tomato puree, served with optional sausage or bacon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,990 recipes mention both. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the rice in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cool and drain it on a sieve.

  2. Dip the bacon into scalding water for 2 minutes, then cut it into 1‑inch dice.

Cook

  1. Fry the bacon in a stew‑pan until it turns yellow.

  2. Add the rice and broth to the pan, along with the pepper.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the tomato puree or sauce.

Serve

  1. Transfer the rice to a serving dish and garnish with sausages, fried bacon curls, or any savory mixture of your choice.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Rice + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,990 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,913 recipes

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

  3. Rice + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 broth as it simmers, giving it body.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the broth as it renders in the pan.
Broth
Cooks the rice and carries flavor through the dish as it reduces.
Tomato puree or sauce
Adds acidity, color and a rich tomato flavor to the finished rice.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice. Rice needs enough liquid and gentle heat to cook through evenly. Stirring occasionally helps prevent the starch from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Illustration of Deviled OystersIllustrationDeviled Oysters25 recipes