Name: Side Dish
Ingredients: chopped cold meat; gravy; cold rice; milk; 1 egg; pepper; coarse sea salt; powdered bread crumbs

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 ↓

Side Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

Season the chopped cold meat.
Wet the seasoned meat with gravy, if available.
Place the meat on a platter.

Make the rice mixture

In a bowl, combine the cold rice with milk and the egg, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.
If there is not enough rice, add powdered bread crumbs to the mixture.
Spread the rice mixture thickly around the platter.

Bake

Place the platter in a 350°F (175°C) oven to heat and brown.

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).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold rice: Forms the bulk of the casserole and gives it body around the meat.
Egg: Binds the rice mixture so it holds together when heated.
Milk: Adds moisture and softness to the rice mixture as it heats.
Chopped cold meat: Provides the main filling and savory flavor of the dish.
Gravy: Moistens the meat and adds savory flavor.

“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.