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Fowl, Stewed, with Rice

A stew of fowl, rice, onions, celery, herbs, and spices simmered slowly in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fowl, Stewed, with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Truss the fowl for boiling and place it in a stewpan with the cold stock.

  2. When it boils, add the onions and celery in large pieces, along with the herbs and peppercorns tied in muslin.

  3. Cover closely and cook very slowly for 1 hour.

Add the rice and finish

  1. Add the washed rice and salt to taste, then continue cooking gently until both the fowl and rice are tender.

  2. The rice should absorb nearly all the stock.

  3. Before serving, remove the vegetables and herbs, season with salt and pepper, and place the fowl on a hot dish surrounded by the rice.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Celery + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and flavour that the stock absorbs as it cooks slowly.
Rice
Absorbs the stock as it cooks, becoming tender and moist and carrying the broth's flavour.
Stock
Cooks the fowl and rice gently and is absorbed by the rice, giving the dish its moisture.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the stock as they simmer.

The step that matters

Cooking the fowl very slowly with the lid on. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and moist, while a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and can break up the fowl. Keeping the pot covered limits evaporation so the liquid stays available for the rice.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, celery, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, celery, parsley, thyme, 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.

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