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Elaborate Pilaf

A pilaf made with chicken, mutton, rice, raisins, saffron or curry, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and saffron work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Elaborate Pilaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and shoulder of mutton in water until cooked.

  2. Remove the chicken and cut it into small pieces.

  3. Fry the mutton until brown.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash and dry the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in the same broth for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the rice.

  4. Brown the rice in butter in a deep saucepan.

  5. Add raisins.

  6. Add enough water to cover the rice.

  7. Add saffron or curry.

  8. Add the sliced onion fried in butter.

  9. When the rice is tender, warm the chicken and mutton with it.

  10. Serve garnished with hard-boiled eggs cut into rings.

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 + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Raisin + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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 broth as it cooks, giving it a tender, fluffy texture.
Butter
Fat that browns the rice and onion, adding richness and a nutty, toasted flavour.
Mutton
Contributes savoury, rich meat flavour that seasons the broth and the dish.
Chicken
Adds tender meat and flavour to the broth, which is then absorbed by the rice.
Saffron or curry
Provides colour and aromatic spice that flavours the rice.

The step that matters

Browning the rice in butter. Rice toasted in fat before liquid is added coats the grains, helping them stay separate and giving a nutty aroma. Too little heat or time leaves it pale and flavourless, while too much can scorch the bottom of the pan.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, mutton, rice, butter, saffron, onion, egg):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mutton, rice, butter, saffron, onion, egg. 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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