Skip to main content
Main

To Make a French Pilau

A rice dish cooked with boiled fowl, butter, and egg yolks, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Make a French Pilau

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fowls

  1. Boil the fowls until cooked through, then remove them from the pot.

  2. Take out some of the cooking liquid and add the rice to the remaining water.

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice until tender, then stir in the butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with half of the buttered rice.

  2. Place the fowls on top and pour the remaining cooking liquid over them.

  3. Spread the other half of the rice over the fowls, smoothing it out.

  4. Brush the top with the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rice + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 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

Fowls
Provide the main protein, cooked gently in liquid until tender and flavourful.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing the cooking liquid as it softens into a tender base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the rice and giving it a smooth, savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Brushed on top, they enrich the surface and promote golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until tender. Rice must absorb the liquid fully and soften before baking; undercooked grains stay firm and the dish can dry out or turn gritty during the oven stage.

“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