Skip to main content
Main

Chicken, Ramakins of

A rice pilaf cooked with chicken, curry paste, onions, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken, Ramakins of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt 2 oz of butter in a pan over low heat.

  2. Fry the pieces of chicken slowly until nicely browned, then keep them warm.

Cook the rice

  1. Add rice to the pan and pour in stock until the rice absorbs most of it.

  2. Mix the browned chicken and curry paste into the rice and continue cooking until tender, adding more stock if needed.

Fry the onions and serve

  1. Slice the onions thinly and fry them in the remaining butter until brown.

  2. Serve the pillau in the center of a hot dish, topped with fried onion rings.

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

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 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

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the chicken and onions brown.
Chicken
Browning gives savoury flavour, and the meat becomes the main body of the dish.
Rice
Absorbs the stock as it cooks, forming the bulk and texture of the pilaf.
Stock
Supplies the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs, adding savoury flavour.
Curry paste
Adds spice and aroma that flavour the rice and chicken.
Onions
Frying until brown adds sweetness and savoury depth as a topping.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken slowly. Slow frying over gentle heat lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction without burning, building the flavour base for the rice.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, rice, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes