Name: Vegetarian Kedgeree
Ingredients: ½ pound boiled split peas; ¼ pound cooked rice; ½ cup stock or milk; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon ginger; 1 teaspoon curry powder; ½ pound fried onions; 4 hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vegetarian Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

Mix the rice and peas in a bowl.
Moisten the mixture with stock or milk.
Season with salt, pepper, ginger, and curry.

Serve

Pile the mixture on a serving dish.
Garnish with fried onions and quartered hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,595 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Peas + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,434 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas: Provide the bulk and soft, starchy body of the dish.
Rice: Adds bulk and a light, fluffy texture to the mixture.
Stock or milk: Moistens the mixture so the rice and peas hold together without drying out.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add protein-rich richness and a firm, creamy contrast in texture.
Fried onions: Add savoury sweetness and browned flavour as a garnish.

Swap the onion

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

Asparagusfits better
Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, rice, milk, pepper, ginger, egg. 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.