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Fowl, Pilau, Indian

A pilau made with fowl, rice, butter, onions, spices, almonds, and sultanas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fowl, Pilau, Indian

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the fowl in veal broth and reserve the broth.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the sliced onions, cloves, cinnamon, and peppercorns until the onions are golden.

  3. Stir in the rice and continue stirring until it absorbs the butter.

  4. Pour in the reserved fowl broth until it covers the rice and is about 1 inch above it.

  5. Simmer until the rice is nearly cooked.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

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

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

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

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 broth as it cooks, becoming tender.
Butter
Coats the rice grains and adds richness and flavour when fried with the onions.
Onions
Fried until golden to add sweetness and savoury depth to the pilaf.
Fowl
Boiled to supply the broth that cooks the rice and gives the dish its meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice in butter. Stirring the rice until it absorbs the butter coats each grain, which helps keep the grains separate and stops them clumping when the broth is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, clove, cinnamon, 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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