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Pillau Rice

Pilau Rice is a fragrant rice dish cooked in seasoned stock with spices and garnished with fried almonds, onions, sultanas, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Pillau Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Combine stock, onion, garlic, cloves, cinnamon, mace, bay leaves, cardamom seeds, and salt in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add rice to the boiling stock.

  4. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.

  5. Once the rice is soft, drain it through a wire sieve.

  6. Place the drained rice by the fire to steam.

Serve

  1. Remove the mace, cinnamon, onion, and garlic before serving.

  2. Serve the rice over boiled fowl, rabbit, or mutton.

  3. Garnish with fried almonds, crispy onions, fried sultanas, and hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Save the cooking liquid for a delicious soup.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the flavoured stock as it cooks, becoming soft and forming the body of the dish.
Stock
Cooks the rice and carries the spices, giving the grains their savoury flavour.
Garlic
Adds aromatic pungency to the stock, mellowing as it simmers.
Eggs
Hard-boiled and sliced as a garnish, adding richness and a mild, creamy contrast.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice as it cooks. Rice starch sticks to the pan and can scorch on the bottom when the liquid boils down. Occasional stirring keeps the grains separate and evenly cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, garlic, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, rice):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, garlic, clove, cinnamon, cardamom, 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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