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Tomato Pilau

A tomato-based rice dish cooked with onions, nut butter, Marmite, and vegetable stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice 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 ↓

Tomato Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pilaf

  1. Fry the sliced onions in 2 oz. (¼ cup) of nut butter until soft.

  2. Add the tomato purée and vegetable stock, flavored with Marmite, and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface, then add the well-washed rice.

  4. Cook gently until the liquid is almost absorbed.

Finish and serve

  1. Melt the remaining nut butter in a stewpan.

  2. When hot, add the rice and stir for a few minutes.

  3. Cover the pan and let it sit on the stove for about 15 minutes.

  4. 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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 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 stock and tomato flavor as it cooks.
Nut butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the rice grains stay separate.
Tomato purée
Provides acidity, color and savory tomato flavor to the cooking liquid.
Vegetable stock
Supplies the liquid the rice absorbs, becoming the main source of seasoning.
Onions
Soften and sweeten when fried, building a base flavor for the dish.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the liquid is almost absorbed. Rice cooked too hard can boil dry or scorch on the bottom before the grains are tender. Gentle heat lets the liquid absorb evenly and the grains swell without breaking.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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