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Excellent Oriental Pilau

A rice dish cooked with butter, onion, meat, spices, and topped with boiled fowl, bacon, eggs, and small boiled onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Excellent Oriental Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meat gravy

  1. Heat the butter in a stewpan over medium heat until it turns brown.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until browned.

  3. Add the beef or mutton pieces and enough water to cover them.

  4. Stew until a rich gravy forms.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Add enough water to cover the rice.

  3. Bring the rice to a boil.

  4. Add a large piece of butter, ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, and whole pepper to the rice.

  5. Stir with a knife to prevent burning.

  6. Let the rice boil until dry.

  7. Strain the rice.

Serve

  1. Place the boiled fowl and bacon on a serving dish and cover with the rice.

  2. Serve with hard-boiled eggs cut in halves and small boiled 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  5. Onion + ricetop 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

Butter
Browns and adds rich, nutty flavour to the onion and the rice.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish; washing and boiling it until dry gives separate, fluffy grains.
Beef or mutton
Releases juices while stewing, creating a rich gravy that flavours the dish.
Onion
Softens and browns, adding sweetness and depth to the base.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth to the rice.

The step that matters

Let the rice boil until dry. Rice left with too much liquid turns mushy and sticky, while over-drying can scorch the bottom. Stirring prevents sticking and burning as the water evaporates.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, beef, meat, rice, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, beef, meat, rice, ginger, cinnamon. 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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