Skip to main content
Main

Fowl, Pilau, Indian

A pilaf made with fowl, rice, butter, onions, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, and fowl broth.

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

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

Prepare

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

Cook the rice

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the pilaf as its starch absorbs the broth and softens.
Butter
Coats the rice grains, adding richness and helping them stay separate while cooking.
Onions
Browning in the butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the broth and rice.
Veal broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that flavors and hydrates the rice.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice in the butter. Stirring until the rice absorbs the butter coats each grain with fat, which helps the grains stay separate instead of clumping as they cook in the broth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes