Name: Curried Rice and Tomatoes
Ingredients: ½ lb Patna rice; 2 teaspoons curry powder; Salt to taste; 1 oz butter; 1 pint cold water; 1 lb tomatoes; Butter for tomatoes; Pepper to taste

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 ↓

Curried Rice and Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Wash the rice.
Place the rice in a pot with cold water.
Bring to a boil, then drain the water.
Mix 1 pint of cold water with the curry powder.
Add this mixture to the pot with the rice, butter, and salt.
Cover the rice with buttered paper and simmer gently for about 20 minutes until the water is absorbed.

Bake the tomatoes

Wash the tomatoes.
Place them in a flat baking dish with a few spoonfuls of water.
Dust the tomatoes with pepper and salt, and add small pieces of butter on top of each tomato.
Bake the tomatoes for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on their size and the oven heat.

Serve

Serve the rice in the center of a hot flat dish, arrange the tomatoes around it, and pour the liquid over the rice.

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 + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

Patna rice: Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing the curried liquid as it simmers to a tender, fluffy texture.
Curry powder: Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the rice.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries the curry flavour and gives the rice a smooth mouthfeel.
Tomatoes: Soften and sweeten as they bake, adding moisture and a mild acidity to the plate.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice gently under buttered paper. Rice absorbs liquid and cooks through evenly only at a gentle simmer; a hard boil can scorch the bottom and leave grains unevenly cooked. The buttered paper holds in steam so the water is absorbed without drying the top.

Swap the tomato

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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Tomato Bisque61 recipes

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Curried Rice and Tomatoes