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Dessert

A Chartreuse of Apples and Rice

A pastry pie filled with apples and rice, baked with cinnamon and rose water.

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

A Chartreuse of Apples and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil rice with cinnamon in milk until thick, stirring in rose-water or orange-flower water.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Fill the apple cores with raspberry jam.

  3. Border a deep dish with pastry.

  4. Place the apples inside the pastry border.

  5. Fill the gaps between apples with rice.

  6. Brush the top with egg yolk.

  7. Sprinkle the top with sugar.

  8. Form a pattern with sweetmeats.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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

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

  4. Apple + raspberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Rice
Thickens the milk into a soft filling that fills the gaps between the apples.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a creamy, thick custard-like filling.
Apples
Form the main body of the pie, softening as they bake and giving moisture and tartness.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy finish on the pastry.
Pastry
Forms the deep border that holds the apples and rice in the dish.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until thick. Rice must be cooked until it has absorbed the milk and thickened, so the filling sets firm enough to fill the gaps without running or leaving a watery pie.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cinnamon, milk, rose, apple, egg, sugar. 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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