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Chicken and Rice

A Spanish chicken and rice dish cooked with olive oil, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the olive oil in a pan.

  2. Cut the chicken into pieces and cook until pale brown.

  3. Make stock with the leftover chicken parts.

  4. Fry the onions and tomatoes in another pan until slightly cooked.

Cook the rice

  1. Combine the chicken, fried onions, tomatoes, washed rice, and stock in a pot.

  2. Boil until the rice is tender and absorbs the liquid.

  3. To prevent burning, place the pot in a saucepan of boiling water or use a double saucepan.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavor, with its juices and browned pieces seasoning the dish.
Olive oil
Carries heat for browning the chicken and softening the onions, adding fat and flavor.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building a savory base for the dish.
Rice
Absorbs the stock as it cooks, becoming tender and giving the dish its body.
Stock
Supplies the liquid the rice absorbs, carrying flavor through the grains.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that blend into the frying base.

The step that matters

Boiling the rice in the pot. Rice can scorch on the bottom while the liquid is still being absorbed. Gentle heat, or a double saucepan as the record suggests, spreads heat evenly and prevents burning while the grains become tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, olive, rice, pepper, tomato, garlic):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, olive, rice, pepper, tomato, garlic. 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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