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Spanish Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with olive oil, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a pan.

  2. Stir in the dry rice and let it turn brown.

  3. Add the chopped onions and shredded green peppers, and fry until the onions are cooked.

  4. Add the tomatoes and water, and bring to a boil.

  5. 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.

  1. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Dry rice
Forms the base of the dish and absorbs the liquid as it cooks.
Olive oil or cooking oil
Fat that carries heat into the rice and helps it brown.
Tomatoes
Supply liquid and acidity that flavour the rice as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the hot oil.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Let the rice turn brown. Toasting dry rice in hot oil before adding liquid gives it a nutty flavour and helps the grains stay separate. Stopping too early loses that flavour, and adding the liquid too soon prevents browning.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, rice, pepper, tomato. 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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