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Fish and Rice, or Kedgeree

A simple dish of boiled rice mixed with chopped haddock, butter, salt, cayenne pepper, and optional hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish and Rice, or Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and fish

  1. Boil the rice in water until soft.

  2. Chop the boiled haddock into pieces and remove all bones.

Cook and serve

  1. In a pan, combine the fish, rice, and butter.

  2. Stir gently over low heat, adding salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  3. Add chopped hard-boiled eggs if desired.

  4. Serve hot and dry.

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 + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs butter, giving a soft, starchy texture.
Haddock
Supplies the flaky white fish that gives the dish its main flavour and substance.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the rice and fish as they are stirred together.

The step that matters

Stirring over low heat. Gentle heat warms the fish and rice through without toughening the fish proteins or scorching the butter, which would dry out or darken the dish.

“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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