Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple and Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from rice, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and stewed apple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until very tender.

  2. Add butter, sugar, cinnamon, and salt to the rice.

Stew the apple

  1. Peel, core, and slice the apple.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the apple with butter, sugar, and water.

  3. Stew the apple until tender.

Combine

  1. Combine the stewed apple with the rice mixture.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that softens in milk and forms the creamy body of the pudding.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice and gives the pudding its creamy texture.
Apple
Adds fruity moisture and tang that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the apple break down and taste rounder.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk until very tender. Rice must fully soften before the other ingredients are added, because undercooked grains stay firm and chalky. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pan, so it needs gentle heat and frequent stirring.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipes