Name: Chicken with Rice
Ingredients: 1 large fat hen; 1 cup washed rice; water (for boiling); 2 tablespoons butter; 2 hard boiled eggs; 1 tablespoon flour; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

Place the hen in a bag with the washed rice.
Submerge the bag in a pot of cold water and bring to a boil.
Cook for 2 hours, then carefully remove the hen from the bag onto a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

In a bowl, mix the butter and hard boiled eggs until smooth.
Add some of the boiling water from the chicken and the flour, seasoning with salt.
Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve hot.
If cooled, save the boiling water to make soup the next day.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,611 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hen: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Washed rice: Absorbs flavour and starch from the cooking water as the hen cooks.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs: Mashed into the butter to thicken and enrich the sauce with body and flavour.
Flour: Thickens the sauce by binding with the liquid as it is added.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the sauce. Flour must be combined smoothly with the butter-egg mixture and hot broth so it thickens evenly; added too quickly or unmixed, it forms lumps that stay in the sauce.

“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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Chicken with Rice