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Dessert

Rice and Apple Pudding

A boiled pudding made with rice, apples, lemon rind, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice and Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water for 10 minutes, then drain and dry it.

  2. Spread half of the rice on a pudding cloth.

Assemble the pudding

  1. Layer the sliced apples, lemon rind, and sugar on top of the rice.

  2. Cover with the remaining rice, draw the cloth over it, and tie it securely, leaving enough room for the rice to swell.

Boil and serve

  1. Place a plate under the pudding to prevent sticking.

  2. Plunge the pudding into boiling water and boil for 1¾ to 2 hours.

  3. Carefully turn it out and serve with sweet sauce poured around 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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells as it cooks, forming the body of the pudding.
Apples
They soften during boiling, adding moisture and fruity, tart flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the apples.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth with room for the rice to swell. Rice starch absorbs water and expands during cooking. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the swelling is restricted, which can make the pudding dense or cause the cloth to burst.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, lemon, 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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