Name: Rice Calce
Ingredients: ½ pound rice; a little vanilla; butter (for greasing); apricot marmalade; pistachios (for decoration); angelica (for decoration); currants (for decoration); preserved cherries (for decoration)

Why it works: Vanilla and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 608 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Rice Calce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice with a little vanilla as in the previous recipe.
Place the rice in a buttered dome-shaped mold.
Turn the mold over onto a dish and let it cool.
Once cooled, mask the rice with apricot marmalade.
Decorate with pistachios, angelica, currants, and preserved cherries.
This dish can also be served hot directly from the pot.

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.

Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together608 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Pistachio + angelicatop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Vanilla + angelicatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together170 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together407 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Rice + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together140 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, vanilla, butter, apricot, pistachio, angelica):

Cherryfits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, vanilla, butter, apricot, pistachio, angelica. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.