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Dessert

Apples and Rice with Meringue

A baked dish of rice and apples topped with meringue, served with a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apples and Rice with Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the rice

  1. Put the rice in cold water and stir while heating to boiling.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water.

  3. Add milk and salt to the rice.

  4. Cover and cook until the rice is tender.

  5. Beat the egg yolks, then mix in the grated rind of an orange or lemon, sugar, and butter.

  6. Stir this mixture into the rice.

Shape and bake the rice

  1. Transfer the rice to a sugar-dredged concave border mold.

  2. Place the mold in a pan with boiling water and cook in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15-20 minutes.

Prepare and cook the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples, rubbing them with orange or lemon.

  2. Cook in a syrup made of sugar and water, keeping the apples whole until tender.

  3. Fill the apples with jelly or jam and pipe meringue over them.

  4. Dredge with sugar and cook in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 8 minutes.

Serve

  1. Invert the rice onto a serving dish, place the apples in the cavity, and pour the syrup around the base.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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 dessert and sets firm when cooked with milk, egg yolks and sugar.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice custard and help it set into a sliceable, tender mass.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the rice a creamy texture as it cooks.
Apples
Provide tender fruit texture and a tart contrast to the sweet rice and syrup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture in the rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and syrup, and helps the meringue brown lightly on top.

The step that matters

Dredging the mold with sugar before filling. Sugar on the mold surface helps the rice release cleanly when inverted, so the shape holds on the serving dish.

Swap the apple

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

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

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

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