Name: Spanish Macaroni or Rice
Ingredients: 2 slices salt pork, diced; 1 onion, chopped; ¼ clove garlic, chopped; 1 can tomatoes; ½ can corn; soup stock or gravy, to taste; red pepper, to taste; Tabasco sauce, to taste; 3 cups boiled rice or 1 pound cooked spaghetti or macaroni

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Spanish Macaroni or Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Fry the diced salt pork in a skillet until browned.
Add the chopped onion and garlic to the pork fat and sauté until soft.
Strain the can of tomatoes into the skillet with the onion and pork fat.
Add the corn, soup stock or gravy, red pepper, and Tabasco sauce.

Combine and serve

Stir in the boiled rice or cooked spaghetti or macaroni.
Let the mixture stand on the back of the stove for 10 minutes 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,099 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork: Renders fat for frying the onion and garlic, adding savoury flavour to the base.
Onion: Softens while cooking, adding sweetness and body to the sauce.
Tomatoes: Provide acidity and liquid that form the body of the sauce.
Boiled rice or cooked pasta: Absorbs the sauce and provides the starchy base of the dish.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, garlic, tomato, corn, pepper, sauce):

Cuminfits better
Oreganofits better
Thymefits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, garlic, tomato, corn, pepper, sauce. 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.