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A Pilau

A pilaf is a rice dish cooked with a fowl, bacon or ham, onions, spices, and water.

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 ↓

A Pilau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Cover the fowl's breast with slices of bacon or ham, securing them with skewers.

  2. Place the fowl in a stewpan with the sliced onions.

  3. Season with white pepper and mace to taste.

Stew

  1. Cover the fowl with the soaked rice.

  2. Add enough water to cover the whole mixture.

  3. Stew for about 30 minutes, keeping the stewpan covered.

Serve

  1. Serve with the rice either covering the fowl or arranged around it in small heaps.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Ham + ricetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Mace + ricetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein and, as it cooks, flavours the stock the rice absorbs.
Rice
Absorbs the cooking liquid and fat, swelling to form the body of the dish.
Bacon or ham
Lays fat over the breast, adding savoury flavour and moisture to the lean meat.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the stewing liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Keep the stewpan covered while stewing. Covering traps steam so the fowl cooks through gently and the rice absorbs the liquid evenly. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, which can leave the rice unevenly cooked and the liquid reduced too quickly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, onion, mace, 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.

More pilaf recipes

Turkish 40Chicken 23Indian 22Rice 16Syrian 8Mutton 7 See all 15 →

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