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Indian Pilau

A fried fowl and rice dish flavored with curry powder, capers, gherkins, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Indian Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the cut‑up fowl in butter until browned.

  2. Add curry powder, capers, gherkins, tomatoes, and rice.

  3. Stir well and cook until the rice is tender.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Capers + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 savory flavor as it browns in butter.
Butter
Fat that browns the fowl and carries flavor through the dish.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavor that defines the dish.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help cook the rice and balance the spices.
Rice
Absorbs the cooking liquid and becomes tender, forming the body of the pilaf.

The step that matters

Cook until the rice is tender. Rice needs enough liquid and time to absorb it fully. Too little liquid or too short a cook leaves it hard, while too much leaves it mushy. Stirring well helps the rice cook evenly.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, 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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