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Drink

Chicken and Rice Tea

A simple tea made by simmering chopped chicken, rice, pearl barley, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chicken and Rice Tea

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the raw chicken into pieces.

  2. Wash the rice in cold water and mix it with the chicken.

  3. Wash the pearl barley and add it to the mixture.

  4. Add the cold water to the mixture.

Cook

  1. Place everything in a small paper bag.

  2. Cook in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 40 to 55 minutes.

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. Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Chicken + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw chicken
Supplies the meat and juices that flavour the cooking liquid as it cooks slowly.
Rice
Releases starch that gives the liquid body and softens during slow cooking.
Pearl barley
Adds chewy texture and starch as it softens in the liquid.
Cold water
Provides the liquid that carries flavour and moisture from the chicken and grains.

The step that matters

Keeping the oven slow. A low, slow oven lets the chicken cook gently and the rice and barley soften without boiling hard or drying out. Cooking too hot can toughen the meat and scorch the liquid, so hold the oven at the stated temperature and check within the 40 to 55 minute window.

“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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