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Rice Dumplings

Rice dumplings made by steaming rice with milk and salt, layered with apple sauce, served with custard or sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice and apple sauce

  1. Steam the washed rice with water, milk, and salt until cooked.

  2. Meanwhile, steam some good sour apples to make about 1 pint of apple sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wet teacups with cold water.

  2. In each teacup, layer 2 tablespoons of steamed rice, 1 tablespoon of apple sauce, and then 2 more tablespoons of rice.

  3. When ready to serve, turn the dumplings out and serve with soft custard or sweetened cream.

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

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

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk and water, it forms the soft, starchy body of each dumpling.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding richness and a creamy texture.
Apple sauce
Adds moisture and mild tartness between the layers of rice.

The step that matters

Wet the teacups with cold water. Wetting the cups before layering keeps the cooked rice from sticking, so the dumplings can be turned out whole.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sauce, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sauce, cream. 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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