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Chicken and Rice

A simple chicken and rice dish simmered in broth with onion and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chicken and separate it at the joints.

  2. Remove all skin and fat.

  3. Cover the chicken with cold water and add salt, pepper, and sliced onion.

  4. Simmer until the chicken is tender.

  5. Remove the best parts of the meat and return the bones and gristle to the pot.

  6. Simmer until the bones are clean.

Make the rice and serve

  1. Wash and soak the rice for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the broth and remove the fat.

  3. Bring the broth to a boil again and add the rice and cut pieces of chicken.

  4. Simmer until the rice is tender.

  5. Add seasoning to taste and serve immediately, adding cream if desired.

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

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the broth and softens as it cooks, forming the body of the dish.
Whole chicken
Provides the meat and, through simmering, the flavorful broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor to the broth as it simmers with the chicken.

The step that matters

Simmer until the chicken is tender. Simmering gently keeps the meat moist and tender; a hard boil toughens muscle proteins and can cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, rice, cream. 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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