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Rice Soup

Rice Soup is a simple dish made with rice, cheese, tomato juice, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in 5 cups of water with the butter, salt, and pepper until tender.

Finish the soup

  1. Once the rice is soft, add the tomato juice and cheese.

  2. Stir until the soup boils and the cheese is dissolved.

  3. If too much water has evaporated, add a little more.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 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
Its starch softens and thickens the broth as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Tomato juice
Adds liquid, acidity and tomato flavor to the soup.
Cheese
Melts into the hot soup, adding richness and a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat, which carries flavor and rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Stir until the cheese is dissolved. Cheese stirred into very hot liquid can turn grainy or stringy if it overheats or separates. Stirring gently while it melts keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, 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.

More rice soup recipes

Tomato 17White 16Chicken 10Italian 7Mutton 6Curry 5 See all 159 →

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