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Rice Pilau

A fragrant rice dish cooked with butter, stock, raisins, onion, cloves, cinnamon, and pepper, garnished with fried onion rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Rice Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Put the rice in a saucepan and cover it with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then strain and rinse in cold water.

Cook the pilaf

  1. In a saucepan, combine the rice, ½ lb butter, 1 quart white stock, onion with cloves, sultanas, cinnamon, pepper, and a little salt.

  2. Cook over moderate heat until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the stock, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

  3. Remove the onion and cloves, transfer the rice to a hot dish, garnish with fried onion rings, and serve.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish, softening as it absorbs the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the grains and carrying flavour.
White stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs as it becomes tender.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture against the soft rice.

The step that matters

Stirring while the rice absorbs the stock. Constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the starch moving so the grains do not stick and scorch on the base of the pan as the liquid disappears.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, raisin, onion, clove, cinnamon. 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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