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Rice and Onion Soup

A simple soup made with onions, rice, butter, and water, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice and Onion Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the soup

  1. Chop the onions very finely.

  2. Fry the onions in the butter until slightly browned.

  3. Add the rice, seasoning, and water.

  4. Cook gently until the rice is quite soft.

Serve

  1. Optionally, stir in the chopped parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Onions
Soften and brown in butter, building sweetness and savoury flavour as the base of the soup.
Rice
Thickens the soup as its starch softens and breaks down during gentle cooking.
Butter
Carries the frying of the onions and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the rice is quite soft. Rice simmered too hard can scorch on the bottom of the pan or break apart unevenly. Gentle heat lets the grains absorb water and soften evenly while the starch thickens the soup.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, rice, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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

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