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To Boil Fowl with Rice

A dish of boiled fowl served with rice, flavored with onion, mace, pepper, salt, and optional parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Fowl with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the fowl

  1. Stew the fowl slowly in the mutton broth, skimming well.

  2. Add the onion, mace, pepper, and salt to the broth.

  3. About 30 minutes before serving, add the soaked rice.

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

Plate and serve

  1. Place the rice on a sieve over the fire to keep warm.

  2. Keep the fowl hot and place it in the center of a serving dish.

  3. Arrange the rice around the fowl without the broth.

  4. Serve with gravy or a sauce made of 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main cooked meat, becoming tender through slow stewing in the broth.
Mutton broth
Cooks the fowl and rice gently, adding moisture and savory flavor to both.
Rice
Absorbs liquid as it softens, becoming tender and filling the dish.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth of flavor to the cooking broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth while stewing the fowl. Skimming removes foam and fat that rise to the surface, keeping the broth clear and the flavor clean.

Swap the mace

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

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

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