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Kedgeree or Khitchri

A dish of rice, cold fish, eggs, butter, and lemon, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Kedgeree or Khitchri

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the cold cooked fish into small pieces with a fork.

  2. Rinse and sift the rice.

Cook the rice

  1. In a large pan, bring the water to a boil and add the salt and lemon juice.

  2. Once boiling, add the rice and stir with a wooden spoon.

  3. Cook for 10-13 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is soft.

  4. Stop the cooking by adding a dash of cold water and drain the rice.

  5. Leave the rice in the hot pan, covered with a cloth, for 10 minutes to dry.

Assemble and serve

  1. Crush the hard-boiled eggs together into a coarse mince.

  2. Melt the butter over low heat, then stir in the rice and fish, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  3. Add the crushed eggs and transfer to a hot serving dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch cooks soft and forms the body of the dish.
Cold cooked fish
Provides the main protein and flaky texture throughout the rice.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a crumbly texture when crushed into the rice.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the rice and fish with flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and butter.

The step that matters

Drying the rice after draining. Leaving the drained rice covered in the hot pan lets surface moisture evaporate, so the grains stay separate instead of turning sticky when mixed with butter, fish and egg.

“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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