Why it works: Rice and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
A Cheap and Nutritious Dinner
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the rice in salted water until quite soft.
Fry the bacon and sliced onions together.
Mix the bacon and onions with the moist rice.
Cook
Transfer the mixture into a greased deep basin.
Tie a cloth over the basin and place it in a large saucepan of boiling water.
Boil for 1 hour.
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.
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Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,433 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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, once softened, holds the other ingredients together.
- Bacon
- Adds fat and savoury flavour as it renders into the rice.
- Onions
- Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and brown in the bacon fat.
The step that matters
Boiling the rice until quite soft. Rice that is not cooked through stays firm and grainy, so it will not bind well with the bacon and onions. Cooking it fully softens the starch so the mixture holds together when steamed.
“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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