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Risotto

Risotto is a rice dish cooked in water with onions, cheese, and optional tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Risotto

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice and fry the onions in a little fat until brown.

  2. Add 2 pints of water and the rice to the pan.

  3. Cook for about an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the grated cheese before serving.

  2. Optionally, add tomatoes when in season.

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

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

  2. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cheese + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,849 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the water and cooking liquid, becoming tender and giving the risotto its body.
Cheese
Melts into the hot rice, adding richness and a savoury, creamy texture.
Onions
Frying until brown builds sweetness and savoury depth as the base flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese. 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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