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Chicken and Rice

A curry-flavored chicken and rice stew with tomatoes, onions, and chillies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the chicken joints dry and trim them neatly.

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the olive oil in a stewpan until hot; test with a piece of bread.

  2. Fry the chicken joints until golden brown, stirring and turning them.

  3. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, then add chopped onions and red chillies; fry together.

Stew and serve

  1. Mix in the quartered tomatoes and washed rice with the chicken.

  2. Pour in a small quantity of broth and stew until the rice is cooked and the broth is absorbed.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve in a deep dish without a cover.

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. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  4. Olive + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,994 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 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

Chicken
Browning in hot oil builds colour and flavour, and slow stewing keeps the meat tender and moist.
Rice
Absorbs the broth as it cooks, turning the liquid into a starchy, thickened base for the dish.
Tomatoes
Break down during stewing to add acidity and body to the sauce.
Olive oil
Conducts heat for frying and carries the curry flavours through the chicken and rice.
Curry paste
Releases aromatic spices into the fat, giving the dish its main savoury flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding depth to the base of the curry.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until golden brown. Browning the chicken through dry heat and the Maillard reaction creates the savoury colour and flavour that the stew builds on; pale or crowded chicken will taste flat and steam rather than brown.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, olive, tomato, rice, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, tomato, rice, onion. 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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