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Baking

Curry of Tomatoes and Rice

A baked layered dish of tomatoes, rice, curry powder, butter, salt, and sugar.

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 ↓

Curry of Tomatoes and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Stir the curry powder and sugar into the tomatoes.

  2. Layer some tomatoes in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  3. Cover with raw rice, sprinkle with salt, and drop bits of butter over the rice.

  4. Add more tomatoes, then more rice, salt and butter, repeating until all ingredients are used. Ensure the top layer is tomatoes.

  5. Let the dish sit for 2 hours.

Bake

  1. Bake covered in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 40 minutes, then uncover to brown.

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. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the tomato liquid as it cooks, becoming tender and turning the dish into a starchy base.
Tomatoes
Provide the liquid and acidity that cook the rice and form the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the layers.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour of the dish.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Ensure the top layer is tomatoes. Raw rice left uncovered by liquid can stay hard and dry, so a tomato top layer keeps the surface moist while the rice cooks through.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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