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A Pillau

Rice cooked in broth or butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and topped with meat and beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and mace match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,695 recipes mention both. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the soaked rice.

  3. Boil the rice in water for 10 minutes.

  4. Skim the rice if necessary.

  5. Add ½ cup of milk for each cup of rice. Boil the rice with milk for 2-3 minutes.

  6. Strain the rice.

  7. Return the strained rice to the saucepan over low heat.

  8. Add 2 tablespoons of melted butter. Add 2 teaspoons of the boiling water.

  9. Simmer the rice for 8 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare your choice of meat.

  2. Place the meat in a hot dish, topping with bacon if using fowl or veal.

  3. Cover the meat with the rice. Smooth the rice over the meat.

  4. Glaze the rice with the beaten egg.

  5. Brown the dish in the oven or before the fire.

  6. Garnish with hard boiled egg rings and lemon slices.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. White pepper + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. White pepper + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,657 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + muttontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,019 recipes

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

  4. Butter + muttontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,283 recipes

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

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 milk and butter as it simmers.
Milk (in the method)
Adds richness and softness as the rice absorbs it during boiling.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Beaten egg
Sets on the surface and promotes browning when the dish is baked.

The step that matters

Brown the dish in the oven or before the fire. Heat applied to the egg glaze sets and browns the surface. Too little heat leaves it pale and wet, while too much can scorch it before the rice is hot through.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, mace, mutton, egg, lemon):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, mace, mutton, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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