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Pilau

Pilau is a rice dish cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and fowl broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Boil the rice in water for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the rice in a colander.

Cook

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the rice with butter, salt, and pepper, stirring well.

  2. Gradually add the fowl broth.

  3. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes until the rice is done and grains are separate.

  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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

East indian rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the broth as it cooks.
Fowl broth
Supplies liquid and flavour that the rice absorbs as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and coats the grains so they stay separate.

The step that matters

Adding the broth gradually. Adding the broth in stages lets the rice absorb it evenly. Pouring it all at once can make the grains soggy and uneven, so they do not stay separate.

“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.

More pilaf recipes

Turkish 40Chicken 23Indian 22Rice 16Syrian 8Mutton 7 See all 15 →

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