Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Chicken and Rice

A dish of boiled chicken served with rice cooked in chicken gravy and celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Cook the chicken as in the previous recipe.

  2. Half an hour before serving, remove 1 cup of gravy.

  3. Season the gravy well.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg.

Cook the rice

  1. Cut the celery into four pieces.

  2. In a pot, boil the rice in 2 quarts of salted water with the celery for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the rice.

  4. Shake the rice in a colander.

  5. Remove the celery pieces.

  6. Put the rice into a saucepan.

  7. Cover the rice with the hot chicken gravy.

  8. Set the saucepan in a pan of boiling water.

  9. Cook gently for 15 minutes, or until the rice absorbs all the gravy.

Serve

  1. When serving, create a border of rice around the chicken.

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. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Egg + ricetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the gravy as it cooks, becoming tender and moist.
Chicken gravy
Supplies the liquid and flavor that the rice absorbs during the gentle final cooking.
Beaten egg
Stirred into the gravy to enrich it and help thicken and bind the sauce when heated.

The step that matters

Cook the rice gently in the gravy. Rice cooked over too much heat can scorch on the bottom or turn unevenly cooked before it absorbs the gravy. Gentle heat in a water bath lets the starch soften slowly and evenly while the liquid is absorbed.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes