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Chili-colorad

A chicken chili with red pepper pods, parsley, onions, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chili-colorad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cook the chicken in a steamer or by stewing until well done.

  2. Chop the cooked chicken and mix in chopped parsley and onions.

Make the pepper sauce

  1. Remove seeds from the red pepper pods and cover with boiling water.

  2. Cook the pepper pods until tender, then drain and rub through a sieve to extract juice.

  3. Add the pepper juice to the chicken and cook together for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare rice by cooking it well, then mix in butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Serve the chicken on a platter with a border of rice around it.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  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

Chickens
Provides the main protein, which is cooked until well done and then chopped.
Red pepper-pods
Their juice flavours and colours the chicken during the final simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the cooked rice a softer, smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the rice mixture slightly, helping it hold together.

The step that matters

Rub the pepper pods through a sieve. Pods must be fully tender before sieving, or the pulp stays fibrous and the juice comes out thin and gritty, which affects the final texture of the chicken.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, parsley, butter, flour, rice):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, parsley, butter, flour, 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.

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