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Rice, Apple

A baked dish of rice and apples mixed with marmalade and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Rice, Apple

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk with sugar and lemon peel until tender.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples, then simmer them in sugar and water with lemon juice until tender.

  2. Remove the apples and let them drain.

  3. Make a marmalade with the 4 additional apples in the same syrup.

  4. Mix the marmalade with the rice and the yolks of the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the mixture in a baking dish and place the 6 apples hollow side up on top.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Before serving, fill the center of the apples with apricot marmalade or your choice of preserve.

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. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  5. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 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
Cooks in milk to a soft, creamy base that gives the bake its body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to add moisture and a tender, creamy texture.
Eggs
Yolks bind the rice and marmalade mixture so it sets rather than runs when baked.
Apples
Simmered until tender, they add sweetness and moisture and hold their shape in the bake.
Apricot marmalade or preserve
Fills the apple centers with concentrated sweetness and fruity flavour at serving.

The step that matters

Baking the assembled dish. The egg yolks set the rice mixture as it heats. Too hot or too long can make the custard-like base dry, curdled or rubbery, so watch the oven closely.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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