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To Boil Fowls with Rice

A stew of fowl simmered in mutton broth with onion, mace, pepper, salt, and rice, served hot with gravy or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Boil Fowls with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the fowl slowly in the mutton broth, seasoned with onion, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. About 30 minutes before it is ready, add the washed and soaked rice.

  3. Simmer until the rice is tender, then strain it from the broth.

  4. Place the rice on a sieve before the fire to dry.

  5. Keep the fowl hot, lay it in the center of a dish, and arrange the rice around it without the broth.

  6. Serve with gravy or parsley and butter.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it stews slowly in the broth.
Rice
Absorbs flavor from the broth and softens into a tender, starchy side around the fowl.
Mutton broth
Cooks the fowl gently and carries seasoning, adding savory flavor to the meat and rice.

The step that matters

Simmering the fowl slowly. Gentle, low heat lets the connective tissue in the fowl break down slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy rather than tough and dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, rice. 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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