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Rice with Tomatoes

A simple rice dish cooked with tomato sauce, butter, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the rice and wash it in cold water.

Cook

  1. Add the tomato sauce and butter, then cover with stock.

  2. Add salt and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Rice + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,396 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Italian rice
Its starch thickens the cooking liquid and gives the dish a creamy, tender texture.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity, color, and tomato flavor to the rice as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the finished rice.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs as it becomes tender.

The step that matters

Washing the rice in cold water. Rinsing rice removes loose surface starch, which otherwise makes grains stick together. Keeping the grains separate helps the finished dish keep a better texture.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sauce, butter. 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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