Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
Broth, Chicken
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the chicken
Dress and clean the chicken; remove skin and fat.
Disjoint the chicken and wipe it with a wet cloth.
Place the chicken in a stewpan and cover it with cold water.
Make the broth
Heat slowly to boiling point, skim, and cook until the meat is tender.
When half done, season with 1½ teaspoons of coarse sea salt.
There should be about 3 pints of stock; strain, cool, and remove fat.
Reheat the stock to boiling point and add 2 tablespoons of well-washed rice, if desired.
Cook until the rice is soft.
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.
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Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,769 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
- Whole chicken
- Provides the meat and bones that release flavour and body into the stock.
- Rice
- Softens and slightly thickens the broth as it cooks, adding body.
The step that matters
Heat slowly to boiling point and skim. Bringing the water up gradually lets impurities and fat rise to the surface gently, so they can be skimmed off. Rapid boiling emulsifies them into the liquid, leaving the broth cloudy and greasy.
“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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