Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Rice

Rice cooked with onions, tomatoes, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and tomato 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 ↓

Spanish Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice well and drain it.

  2. Heat the oil in a stew pan, add the sliced onion, and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove the onion from the pan.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the rice to the pan and fry until it begins to brown.

  2. Add the tomatoes, onion, and 3 cups of boiling water.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. For added flavor, include any leftover meat.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 body of the dish as its starch absorbs the cooking liquid and sets into grains.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, color, and moisture to the cooking liquid.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it browns in the oil.
Cooking oil
Carries flavor and helps the onion and rice brown.

The step that matters

Frying the rice until it begins to brown. Toasting the grains in hot oil coats them with fat, which helps them stay separate and adds a nutty, savory flavor. Stopping too early leaves the rice bland, while burning it makes the dish bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes