Name: Rice and Tomato Soup
Ingredients: 2 quarts pot liquor (water from boiled meat); 1 pint fresh or canned tomatoes; 1 cup boiled rice

Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,065 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice and Tomato Soup

Ingredients

2 quarts pot liquor (water from boiled meat)
1 pint fresh or canned tomatoes
1 cup boiled rice

Directions

In a pot, combine the pot liquor, tomatoes, and boiled rice.
Cook slowly for 30 minutes.
Season to taste before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + tomatotop 17% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,438 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Add acidity and fresh, sharp flavor while contributing moisture to the soup.
Boiled rice: Adds body and substance, thickening the soup as its starch releases during simmering.
Pot liquor: Provides the savory meat-based liquid that forms the soup's base.

“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.