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Pilau of Rice

A layered rice dish of chicken and pickled pork cooked with spices and veal broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pilau of Rice

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 pick the rice.

  2. Boil the rice in plenty of water with the cardamom seeds until half done.

  3. Drain the rice and remove the cardamom seeds.

  4. In a stewpan, combine the rice with butter, pounded mace, and salt.

Prepare the meat and broth

  1. Cut the chicken and pickled pork into pieces.

  2. Fry the chicken and pork with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, and Cayenne pepper until half done.

  3. Add bay leaves and sliced onions to the veal broth.

  4. Boil the broth until tender.

  5. Strain the broth through a sieve.

  6. Reduce the broth to half a pint.

  7. Mix the broth with the fried meat and spices.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer some rice in a clean stewpan, followed by the meat mixture, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

  2. Cover the pan and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2.5 hours.

  3. Carefully turn the rice out onto a dish.

  4. Garnish with boiled or fried button onions and halved hard boiled eggs.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

  3. Rice + cardamomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together554 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  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 and butter as it steams.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that coats the grains and carries the spices.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, and browning during frying adds savoury flavour.
Pickled pork
Contributes salty, savoury fat and depth of flavour to the meat layer.
Veal broth
Supplies liquid that the rice absorbs, carrying flavour through the whole dish.
Onions
Sweeten as they cook down and add aromatic depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to half a pint. The rice needs the right amount of liquid to cook through without turning soggy. Reducing the broth concentrates its flavour and sets the moisture level for the baked layers.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, chicken, pork, cardamom, onion, 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.

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