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Indian Pilau

A fragrant rice dish with onions, spices, bacon, boiled fowl, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Indian Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put all the spices into a muslin bag.

  2. In a flat saucepan, fry the onions in butter until nicely browned.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the stock and the mashed rice, along with the bacon.

  2. Cover with water, ensuring there are 2 inches of liquid above the rice.

  3. When the rice is nearly done, place the boiled fowl in the center.

  4. Cover the pot and let it simmer until the rice is dry.

Serve

  1. Serve the rice around the fowl, garnished with hard-boiled eggs and bacon slices.

  2. Remove the bag of spices before serving.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cardamom + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together554 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the onions' browning and adds richness to the rice.
Onions
Frying until browned builds a sweet, savory base for the pilaf.
White rice
Forms the body of the dish as its starch absorbs the stock and water.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that the rice absorbs, adding savory flavor.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavors the rice as it cooks.
Young fowl
The main protein, cooked gently on top of the simmering rice.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice until dry. Rice starch swells as it absorbs liquid. Too much heat or too long a simmer can scorch the bottom, while stopping too early leaves the grains wet and heavy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, egg, rice):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, egg, rice. 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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