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Fowl Stewed with Rice

A stew of a trussed pullet with veal broth, mace, onions, and rice, served with benshamelle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fowl Stewed with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Stew the trussed pullet with veal broth, mace, and onion slices until tender and the liquid is nearly reduced.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice until half cooked.

  3. Strain the rice.

  4. Add butter, cayenne pepper, and salt to the rice.

  5. Simmer the rice until fully cooked.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the fowl in the center of a dish.

  2. Top the fowl with rice.

  3. Serve with benshamelle sauce over the rice.

  4. Garnish with leaves of baked puff pastry around the 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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pullet
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Veal broth
Moistens the bird and carries flavour as the liquid reduces around it.
Rice
Forms the bed under the fowl and absorbs butter and seasoning as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the rice.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer the rice until fully cooked. Rice is first boiled only until half cooked, so the second simmer must finish the grains fully. Too little liquid or heat can leave them firm, while too much can make them mushy. Gentle, steady simmering lets the grains swell evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, rice, butter, pepper, sauce. 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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