Name: Pilau
Ingredients: ½ cup rice; 2 cups stock (or water); a pinch of saffron (or curry powder); salt to taste

Why it works: Rice and saffron work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pilau

Ingredients

½ cup rice
2 cups stock (or water)
a pinch of saffron (or curry powder)
salt to taste

Directions

In a pot, bring the stock to a boil.
Add the rice and saffron (or curry powder).
Reduce heat and simmer until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed.
Serve as a side dish or with hachis.

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.

Rice + saffrontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together629 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Provides the starch that absorbs the stock and becomes the tender body of the dish.
Stock: Supplies the cooking liquid that the rice absorbs, adding savory flavor as it does.
Saffron: Adds a distinctive aroma and golden color to the rice.

“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.