Skip to main content
Dessert

Rice-cake, with Pine-apple

A baked rice cake mixed with pineapple and served with a sweet apple‑syrup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Rice-cake, with Pine-apple

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and pineapple

  1. Prepare the rice according to package instructions.

  2. Boil the diced pineapple in a mixture of water and sugar for 10-15 minutes; drain and mix with the rice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a pudding mold and coat it with bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the mold with the rice and pineapple mixture and bake until set.

Make the sauce

  1. To make the sauce, peel and cook the apples in 1 pint of syrup until soft.

  2. Strain the apples through a sieve and mix the strained syrup with the pineapple syrup.

  3. Boil the combined syrup until it coats the back of a spoon.

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. Pineapple + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 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
Forms the body of the cake and sets as it cools after baking.
Pineapple
Adds fruity sweetness and moisture to the rice mixture.
Apples
Cooked and strained to add body and natural pectin to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and syrup and helps thicken the sauce as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boiling the combined syrup until it coats the back of a spoon. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and gets more concentrated. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while over-boiling can turn it sticky or caramelised.

Swap the pineapple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar, butter, bread, apple, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, butter, bread, apple, syrup. 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 Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes