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Rice in Shapes with Currie

A baked rice casserole flavored with curry, butter, and egg yolks, topped with bacon and served with boiled rice and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice in Shapes with Currie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash and boil the rice until half done, then drain it.

  2. Add curry powder to color the rice, along with butter, bay leaf, veal broth, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Cook over low heat until nearly tender, then let it cool.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a tin mold with strips of bacon and fill it with rice, covering the bottom and sides.

  2. Add the dressed curry on top of the rice, using only a little of the liquid.

  3. Cover with the remaining rice and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

Unmold and serve

  1. Gently turn the baked rice out onto a dish.

  2. Remove the bacon strips.

  3. Make a small opening at the top.

  4. Add the remaining hot curry liquid.

  5. Serve with plain boiled rice and tender boiled button 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. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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 bake and sets into a firm, sliceable base as it cools and binds.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the curry flavour and softens the rice texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the rice mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Veal broth
Supplies moisture and savoury depth as the rice cooks until tender.
Curry
Gives the rice its colour and its main spiced aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Turn the baked rice out onto a dish. The rice must be cooled and set after baking so the egg yolks have firmed it; turning it out too early can make the mold collapse or break apart.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, veal, egg, chicken, onion):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, veal, egg, chicken, onion. 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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