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Curries and Indian Dishes

A dish of rice cooked with a whole fowl and spices, garnished with fried raisins, almonds, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Curries and Indian Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in water until tender.

  2. Stir in salt, cayenne, cinnamon, and cloves.

Cook with the fowl

  1. Make a well in the center of the rice and place the fowl inside.

  2. Heap the rice over the fowl and cook together for about 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the fowl on a dish with rice around it and garnish with fried raisins, almonds, and onions.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Rice + cinnamontop 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
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the spices and moisture as it cooks.
Whole fowl
Provides the main protein, cooked slowly within the rice so it stays moist.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the rice a warm, pungent bite.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aromatic notes to the rice.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, sweet-spicy aroma that pairs with the cinnamon.

The step that matters

Placing the fowl in the rice and cooking together. The rice must surround the fowl so it cooks evenly and stays moist. Cooking the bird covered in rice over a long period helps the meat become tender, while the rice absorbs the juices and flavours.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper, cinnamon, clove, raisin, almond):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, cinnamon, clove, raisin, almond. 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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