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Indian Pilau

A fragrant rice dish cooked with butter, onions, spices, bacon, and a young fowl, garnished with boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Indian Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavorings

  1. Put all the spices into a muslin bag.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onions until golden brown.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the stock and the mashed rice to the pan.

  2. Add the bacon and stir well.

  3. Transfer everything to a flat saucepan and cover with water, ensuring there are 2 inches of liquid above the rice.

  4. When the rice is nearly done, place the boiled fowl in the center of the rice.

  5. Cover the pot and let it simmer until the rice is dry.

Serve

  1. Remove the bag of spices before serving.

  2. Serve the rice around the fowl, garnished with hard-boiled eggs and bacon slices.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cardamom + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together554 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Carries flavor and, with the onions, helps them brown for a rich savory base.
Onions
Browning them until golden adds sweetness and depth to the rice.
Rice
Absorbs the stock and water as it simmers, forming the body of the dish.
Stock or gravy
Supplies the main liquid that the rice absorbs, adding savory flavor throughout.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky flavor into the rice as it cooks.

The step that matters

Letting the rice dry out gently. Rice absorbs liquid as it simmers, and the fowl is added only once the rice is nearly done. Covering and simmering slowly lets the grains cook through and dry without scorching at the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, egg, rice):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, 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.

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