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Pilau of Fowl

A chicken pilaf cooked with stock, rice, raisins, and butter, garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and fried onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Pilau of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Truss the chicken as if for boiling.

  2. Wash the rice and dry it with a soft cloth.

Cook

  1. Put the chicken into a stewpan with the stock, salt, pepper, and mace, and boil gently until three‑quarters cooked.

  2. Boil the rice in water for 5 minutes, then drain it.

  3. Stir the rice in a stewpan with butter until lightly browned.

  4. When the chicken is half cooked, add the rice and raisins, and let simmer until the grains are tender and the gravy is absorbed.

Serve

  1. Lay the chicken in a hot dish, cover with rice, and garnish with raisins and hard‑boiled eggs or fried onions.

  2. Serve very hot.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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 stock and rice as it simmers.
Patna rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; its starch absorbs the gravy and sets the tender grain texture.
Butter
Adds fat and gentle browning to the rice before it is simmered.
Stock
Cooks the chicken and the rice, supplying the liquid that is absorbed into the grains.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and soft chewy pockets of moisture through the rice.

The step that matters

Adding the rice to the chicken. The rice must be added when the chicken is only half cooked so it absorbs the gravy and becomes tender without turning mushy. Too much liquid or too long a simmer leaves the grains soft and sticky.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, mace, rice, butter, egg, onion):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, mace, rice, butter, egg, onion. 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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