Skip to main content
Main

Turkish Pilau

A rice dish cooked with roasted meat, ham, thyme, onion, carrot, peppercorns, and spices, finished with butter and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turkish Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and stock

  1. Roast the meat until cooked, then cut into serving pieces and set aside.

  2. In a saucepan, combine bones and trimmings with ham, thyme, onion, carrot, peppercorns, and stock or water.

  3. Simmer gently, skimming until the liquid is flavorful and reduced. Add salt if needed.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice, boil in water for 5 minutes, then drain and dry with a cloth.

  2. In a clean saucepan, melt butter and stir in the rice over gentle heat until lightly colored.

  3. Pour in 1½ pints of stock and simmer gently until the rice absorbs the liquid and is tender.

  4. Add salt, white pepper, and curry powder, stirring lightly to separate the grains.

Serve

  1. Mound the rice on a dish and top with the heated meat slices.

  2. If using fowl, add stewed sultana raisins on top 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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Patna rice
Forms the bulk of the pilaf, absorbing stock as it cooks to become tender and fluffy.
Butter
Coats the rice grains with fat, adding richness and helping them stay separate while toasting lightly.
Stock
Supplies the liquid and flavor that the rice absorbs as it simmers.
Mutton
Provides the main meat, whose flavor is carried through the stock and rice.

The step that matters

Simmering the rice in stock. If the heat is too high or the liquid is not fully absorbed at the right time, rice can scorch or turn mushy. Gentle simmering lets the grains absorb liquid evenly and cook through while staying separate.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, ham, thyme, onion, carrot, rice, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, ham, thyme, onion, carrot, rice, butter. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes