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Turkish Pilau En Casserole

A casserole of lamb chops, rice, tomatoes, pistachios, and suet baked with salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Turkish Pilau En Casserole

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a casserole dish with the suet.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the lamb chops in the dish and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Layer in the parboiled rice and slightly cooked tomatoes, seasoning each layer with coarse sea salt and sugar.

  3. Sprinkle the top with chopped pistachio nuts and additional chopped suet.

  4. Cover the casserole and bake for 1 hour.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Rice + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb chops
Provide the main meat, which flavours the rice and tomato layers as they cook.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs juices and fat as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that help flavour the rice as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the rice and keeps the dish moist during baking.

The step that matters

Layering the rice and tomatoes. Rice needs enough liquid from the tomatoes to cook through under cover. Seasoning each layer spreads flavour evenly, so the dish does not taste salty on top and bland below.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, rice, tomato, pistachio, pepper, sugar):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, rice, tomato, pistachio, pepper, sugar. 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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