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Pilau, Chicken

A chicken and rice dish simmered in a spiced broth, garnished with fried onions.

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 ↓

Pilau, Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Place the chicken in a saucepan with water, onion, garlic, bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon, mace, cardamom seeds, and salt.

  2. Boil until the chicken is tender.

  3. Remove the chicken from the saucepan.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the rice to the broth.

  2. Stir occasionally.

  3. Monitor closely until the rice is soft.

  4. Drain the rice using a wire sieve.

  5. Steam the drained rice over the fire for about 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the chicken on a dish.

  2. Cover the chicken with rice.

  3. Garnish with fried onions.

  4. Strain the broth.

  5. Serve the strained broth as soup.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavours the broth as it simmers.
Patna rice
Absorbs the spiced broth and softens into the body of the pilaf.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness to the broth as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Steam the drained rice. Rice cooked in broth needs gentle, sustained steam to finish absorbing liquid and become fluffy without turning mushy or scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, clove, garlic, cinnamon, cardamom, rice):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, clove, garlic, cinnamon, cardamom, 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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