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Pilau, Indian

A spiced rice dish cooked with mutton or chicken, onions, butter, and optional mango or raisins, finished with cream and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pilau, Indian

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curry base

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter with the chopped mango (or raisins and garlic) in a pan for 10 minutes.

  2. Add curry powder if using raisins.

  3. Sprinkle with salt.

  4. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice gently in stock for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour off the gravy.

  4. Add fresh butter to the rice.

  5. Stir over high heat until evenly colored.

  6. Moisten the rice with a little stock.

  7. Season with herbs, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  8. Simmer until tender.

  9. Remove the lemon rind.

  10. Stir in thick cream.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread half the rice on a hot dish.

  2. Lay the meat on top.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over.

  4. Cover with the remaining rice.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or lamb
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices and adds richness and a golden browning to the rice.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, forming the flavour base of the gravy.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; gentle boiling keeps the grains separate and tender.
Stock
Cooks the rice and adds savoury depth as it is absorbed.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished rice.

The step that matters

Stir the rice over high heat until evenly colored. Butter-coated rice browns unevenly if the heat or stirring is poor, leaving pale and scorched patches. Even stirring spreads the butter and gives uniform colour and flavour.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, butter, mango, rice, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, butter, mango, rice, nutmeg, lemon. 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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