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To Boil Fowls with Rice

A stew of fowl simmered with broth, onion, mace, and rice, served with parsley and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Boil Fowls with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fowl

  1. Stew the fowl in the broth with white pepper, onion, and mace in a closed stewpan.

  2. After 30 minutes, add the soaked rice.

  3. Once the rice is tender, remove the fowl and keep it hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the rice from the broth and let it dry on a sieve.

  2. Dish the fowl and pile the rice around it.

  3. Serve with parsley and butter sauce.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

White fowl
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing in the broth.
Rice
Absorbs flavour from the broth as it cooks, becoming soft and tender.
Broth
Cooks the fowl gently and carries seasoning into both the meat and the rice.

The step that matters

Keeping the stew gently closed and simmering. A closed stewpan at a gentle simmer cooks the fowl slowly, keeping the meat tender and moist rather than tough and dry. Adding the rice only after 30 minutes lets it cook through without turning mushy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mace, rice, parsley, butter, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mace, rice, parsley, butter, sauce. 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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