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Indian Pilau

A rice dish with browned fowl, curry powder, pickles or mangoes, simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 183 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the fowl pieces and fry them in a stewpan with butter until browned.

  2. Remove the fowl from the pan and mix in curry powder, salt, and pickles or mangoes.

  3. Return the fowl to the pan and stew everything gently by the fire for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare the rice so it is well-cooked and dry, allowing the grains to separate.

  2. Serve the rice piled high in the center of a dish, arrange the fowl on top, and pour the sauce over it.

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. Mango + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

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

  2. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mangotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein, which browns in butter and becomes tender during slow stewing.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the fowl brown and carrying flavor into the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavor that defines the dish.
Pickles or mangoes
Adds acidity and sweetness that balance the rich, spiced sauce.
Cooked rice
Forms the base of the dish, with dry, separate grains giving a light texture under the fowl.

The step that matters

Stew the fowl gently. Gentle heat lets the fowl become tender and absorb the sauce without drying or toughening. Vigorous boiling tightens the meat fibers and can break the sauce.

Swap the mango

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Mangothe original
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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