Name: Chicken with Rice
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; water or stock; ½ pound boiled rice; salt to taste; pepper to taste

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 ↓

Chicken with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Clean the chicken thoroughly and place it in a pot with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil and cook until the chicken is tender, adding hot water or stock as needed.
Once the chicken is done, strain the soup.

Finish the soup

Cut the chicken meat into suitable pieces and add it back to the soup.
Stir in the boiled rice and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,379 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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 flavour that make up the body of the soup.
Boiled rice: Adds bulk and soft texture as it absorbs some of the broth.

“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.