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Dessert

Apples with Rice

A baked dish of apples cooked with sugar and rice simmered in milk, finished with vanilla syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,017 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apples with Rice

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.

Prepare the apples

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. In a saucepan, combine apples, water, and sugar. Cover and cook on high heat for 10 minutes.

Make the rice

  1. In another pot, boil rice in milk with salt for 12 minutes, adding orange flower water.

Bake and serve

  1. Place cooked apples in a square tin pan and pour rice over them.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. To serve, use a tinned cake turner to place apples on a hot dessert dish, decorating with rice.

  4. For a pyramidal shape, stack apples: three in the center, two on top, and one on top of those.

  5. Fill empty spaces with rice and serve with vanilla syrup.

Make the vanilla syrup

  1. To make the syrup, combine sugar and cold water in a saucepan, stir for 2 minutes, then add split vanilla beans.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, strain, and cool before serving.

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 + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

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

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Newtown apples
Cooked until tender, they form the base and main fruit of the dish.
Rice
Cooked in milk until soft, it forms the creamy layer that sets around the apples.
Milk
Cooks with the rice, giving it a creamy, soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples as they cook and helps them hold their shape.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in milk with salt for 12 minutes. Rice keeps absorbing milk as it cooks and can scorch on the bottom of the pot. Stirring and watching the heat keeps it creamy rather than sticky or burnt.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, rice, milk, orange, vanilla. 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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