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Indian Stew

A stew of fowl, rice, ham, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, stew the cut-up fowl until cooked through.

  2. Add the raw rice, chopped ham, pepper, and salt, then cook together until the rice swells and absorbs the chicken gravy.

  3. Ensure it does not become hard or dry.

  4. Serve in a deep dish.

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 + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 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

Fowl
Provides the main protein and the gravy that the rice absorbs.
Raw rice
Swells as it cooks, absorbing the gravy and thickening the stew into a starchy body.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice in the gravy. Raw rice keeps absorbing liquid as it cooks. If it cooks too long or the liquid evaporates, the rice hardens and the stew turns dry. Checking the texture and moisture as the rice swells keeps the dish soft and saucy.

“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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