Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Fowl and Rice

A boiled fowl served with rice, onions, mace, pepper, salt, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Fowl and Rice

4 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling, and put it into a stewpan with sufficient clear well-skimmed mutton broth to cover it.

  2. Add the onion, mace, and a seasoning of pepper and salt.

  3. Stew very gently for about 1 hour (if the fowl is large) or about 1/2 hour before it is ready, put in the rice, which should be well washed and soaked.

Cook the rice and serve

  1. When the rice is tender, strain it from the liquor and put it on a sieve reversed to dry before the fire.

  2. Keep the fowl hot in the meantime.

  3. Dish the fowl, put the rice round as a border, pour a little parsley and butter over the fowl, and send the remainder to table in a tureen.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

257Calories
6 gProtein
1 gFat
57 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Rice1 cup cooked (158g) white206
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently whole in the broth so it stays moist and tender.
Rice
Absorbs flavour from the broth and forms a soft, tender border around the fowl.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking broth.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the rice at the right time. Rice cooks quickly, so it should go in only about 1/2 hour before the fowl is ready. Added too early, it turns soft and mushy; added too late, it stays firm. Washing and soaking it first helps the grains cook evenly and stay separate.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, onion, pepper, parsley. 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

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes