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Savory Rice

A rice dish cooked with onion, cheese, tomato sauce, herbs, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Savory Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the rice in water with the chopped onion until tender and nearly dry.

  2. Stir in the cheese, tomato sauce, parsley, herbs, cayenne, salt, and butter, then mix until combined and the mixture is stiff enough to form a mound.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 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 liquid as it cooks until nearly dry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the rice taste smooth and mouthfeel to be softer.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and helps bind the rice together when mixed.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture, acidity and savoury flavour to the rice.

The step that matters

Mixing until stiff enough to form a mound. Rice must be nearly dry after boiling, or the added tomato sauce and butter will make the mixture too wet to hold a shape. Mixing until combined lets the starch and fat bind the grains into a mass that holds its form.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cheese, tomato, sauce, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cheese, tomato, sauce, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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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