Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
To Boil Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick out all discolored grains.
Wash the rice well in two waters.
Cook
In a bright stewpan, pour 2 quarts of boiling water over 1 pint of rice.
Boil uncovered and without stirring until the water has evaporated.
Move the stewpan to the back of the stove.
Toss the rice lightly with a silver fork.
Serve
Serve hot with salt and pepper as a vegetable, or mold it and serve cold with sugar, spice, and cream for tea.
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 + peppertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,379 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 body of the dish; its starch sets as it cooks and drains off, leaving separate grains.
- Boiling water
- Cooks the rice by hydrating its starch, and is poured off as it evaporates.
The step that matters
Boil uncovered and without stirring until the water has evaporated. Stirring releases starch from the grains, making the rice sticky and gummy. Leaving it uncovered lets the surface water evaporate so the grains finish cooking and stay separate.
“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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