Skip to main content
Main

An Indian Pilau

A savory rice dish cooked with fowl, onions, spices, and cream in stock and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coriander and cardamom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 872 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

An Indian Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Truss the fowl as for boiling and roast it in the oven for a few minutes, using bacon or buttered paper to keep it moist.

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt butter in a pan and fry sliced onions, bruised coriander seeds, and whole cardamom seeds until light in color.

  2. Add cream to the fried mixture and stir well.

  3. Place the fowl in the pan with veal stock and let it stew for 15 minutes.

Add the rice and season

  1. Boil rice in milk for 2 minutes, skim it off, and add it to the fowl, stirring gently to prevent sticking.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt, ensuring the rice and liquid surround the fowl.

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. Coriander + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  2. Cardamom + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together554 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,854 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Fowl
Provides the main protein, and its juices and fat flavour the stock and rice as it stews.
Onions
Soften and turn golden as they fry, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Rice
Absorbs the stock and milk as it cooks, becoming tender and forming the body of the pilaf.
Veal stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that stews the fowl and gives the rice savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice in gently. Rice starch releases more readily when stirred hard, which makes the grains gummy and can cause sticking. Gentle folding keeps the grains separate and intact.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter, onion, cardamom, cream, veal, rice):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter, onion, cardamom, cream, veal, 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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes