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Rice and Peas

Rice and Peas (Italian) is a dish of boiled green peas and rice mixed with fried onions, butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the green peas and rice separately until cooked.

  2. Peel and chop the onions.

  3. Fry the onions in a pan with butter and parsley until lightly browned.

  4. Drain the peas and rice.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the drained peas and rice with the fried onions thoroughly.

  2. Serve the mixture piled on a hot dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,434 recipes

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

  5. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 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

Green peas
Add sweetness, color, and a tender texture to the finished dish.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a fluffy, separate-grain texture.
Onions
Browning in butter builds sweet, savory flavor that seasons the rice and peas.
Butter
Carries the onion frying and adds richness and flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the onions until lightly browned. Onions cook down slowly in fat, and browning them develops sweet, savory flavor. Burning them makes the dish bitter, while undercooked onions taste raw.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

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