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Dessert

Apple and Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made from boiled rice and apples, finished with butter and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Apple and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water until very soft.

  2. Add a little salt and butter to the rice.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Place the chopped apples in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  2. Spread the rice over the apples.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with cream on top for added flavor.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and softens in water, forming the creamy body of the pudding.
Apples
They soften as they cook, adding moisture and a fruity sweetness beneath the rice.
Butter
Its fat adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the rice.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until very soft. Rice starch absorbs water and swells as it heats, so rice cooked only until barely tender stays firm and grainy instead of forming a creamy base.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, 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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