Name: Rice and Mushrooms
Ingredients: ½ lb. rice; ½ lb. mushrooms; 2 tablespoons butter; salt; pepper; ⅓ cup water

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Rice and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

Cook the rice in 1 pint of water according to the instructions for rice.

Bake the mushrooms

Peel and wash the mushrooms.
Place the mushrooms in a flat baking dish with ⅓ cup of water, a dusting of pepper, salt, and a bit of butter on each.
Bake the mushrooms at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve

Spread the cooked rice on a flat dish, place the baked mushrooms in the middle, pour over the gravy, and serve.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Rice + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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 the liquid as it cooks.
Mushrooms: Provide the main flavor and soften as they bake in the water and butter.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the mushrooms brown and carry flavor.

“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.