Name: Hopping John
Ingredients: 1 quart dried cowpeas; 1 pint rice; 3 pints water; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 teaspoons salt; optional: beef or pork

Why it works: Rice and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,265 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Hopping John

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the cowpeas overnight in enough water to cover them.
Cook the cowpeas until tender, adding more water if necessary.

Cook and combine

In a separate pot, cook the rice in 3 pints of water until done.
Mix the cooked cowpeas and rice together.
Season with butter and salt, and add beef or pork if desired.

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.

Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried cowpeas: Form the main body of the stew and provide most of its texture and protein-rich bulk.
Rice: Absorbs cooking liquid and adds starchy body, thickening the stew as it cooks.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished stew.

“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.