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Italian Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with butter, onion, tomato pulp, and water or stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Italian Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in an earthenware stewpan.

  2. Add the minced onion and rice, stirring over the heat for a few minutes without browning the onion.

  3. Add the water or stock and reduce.

  4. Stir in the tomato pulp, adding more stock or water if needed.

  5. Continue cooking while stirring until nearly all the moisture is absorbed and the rice is cooked.

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. Onion + buttertop 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
Provides the bulk of the dish and absorbs liquid as it cooks, becoming tender and soft.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour while the onion and rice cook.
Tomato pulp
Adds acidity, colour and savoury flavour to the rice as it cooks down.
Onion
Contributes aroma and savoury sweetness as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the onion and rice without browning the onion. Gentle heat and stirring soften the onion and coat the rice in fat, releasing aroma. Browned onion turns bitter and darkens the dish, changing its flavour and colour.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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