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Dessert

A Turban of Apples and Rice

A baked dish of rice and boiled apples shaped like a turban.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,311 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Turban of Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Lightly butter a plain mold that is 5 inches in diameter and height.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the mold with 8 ounces of prepared rice.

  2. Add 6 quartered apples that have been boiled in syrup.

  3. Turn the mold onto a serving dish and carefully remove it.

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. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Apple + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together742 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rice + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the turban, providing body and a starchy base that holds its shape.
Apples
Provide fruit flavour and moisture, and soften during boiling in syrup.
Syrup
Sweetens the apples and carries flavour into them as they cook.

The step that matters

Turn the mold onto a serving dish and carefully remove it. Rice and soft apples can stick to the mold walls or break apart if the mold is not buttered well or the turn is rushed. Letting the dish rest briefly before inverting helps the shape hold together and release cleanly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, syrup, butter. 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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