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Biz a LA Menagere

A rice dish cooked with bacon, broth, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,100 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and blanch the rice in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cool and drain it.

  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 black pepper.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring the rice occasionally.

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 + 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 cooks.
Streaky bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that carries through the rice.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that the rice absorbs as it simmers, giving it moisture and flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring the rice occasionally. Rice needs enough liquid and gentle heat to cook evenly. Stirring now and then helps the grains release starch and keeps them from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

“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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