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Spanish Rice

A simple rice dish cooked with olive oil, onions, chili or peppers, tomatoes, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spanish Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat olive oil in a large iron skillet.

  2. Add rice and stir until it separates and turns a cream color.

  3. Add chopped onions and stir until cooked.

  4. Add chili powder or green peppers and stir until cooked.

  5. Pour strained tomatoes over the mixture.

  6. Season with salt and pepper, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring constantly.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Olive + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the flavors of the oil, onion and tomato.
Olive oil
Carries heat through the pan and coats the rice so the grains stay separate.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they cook down into the base.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and acidity that cook into a sauce around the rice.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly during the 30-minute simmer. Constant stirring keeps the rice from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the skillet and spreads the heat evenly, so the rice cooks through in the liquid from the tomatoes.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, rice, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, rice, pepper, tomato. 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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