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Fowl, Stewed with Rice

A stew of fowl cooked slowly with rice, onions, celery, herbs, and peppercorns 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 or earthenware casserole 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 main meat, which becomes tender and flavours the stock during slow simmering.
Rice
Absorbs the cooking stock and softens, becoming the starchy base that surrounds the fowl.
Stock
Cooks the fowl and rice and carries flavour, with the rice absorbing nearly all of it.
Onions
Release their sweetness and aroma into the stock during the long, gentle simmer.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock during simmering and is removed before serving.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until it absorbs the stock. Rice added too early can overcook and turn mushy, while too little cooking leaves it firm. Gentle simmering with the lid on lets the grains soften evenly as they absorb the liquid.

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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