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Turkish Pilaf

A rice pilaf cooked with butter, tomatoes, veal or chicken, seasoned with salt and cayenne, garnished with parsley and served with toast points.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Turkish Pilaf

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook rice in boiling salted water, then drain.

Make the pilaf

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan; when melted, add the rice.

  2. Cook for 3 minutes, then add tomatoes, veal, and enough stock to moisten.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, then add salt and cayenne.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter, garnished with parsley and toast points.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

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

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, absorbing butter and stock to become tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the rice grains and carrying flavor.
Canned tomatoes
Adds acidity and moisture, giving the pilaf its color and tangy flavor.
Cooked veal or chicken
Supplies savory meat flavor and chewy texture among the rice.
White stock
Moistens the rice as it cooks, adding savory flavor throughout.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, veal, pepper, 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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