Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricots with Rice

A sweet rice dish cooked with milk, lemon peel, eggs, sugar, and stewed apricots, served with optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Apricots with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice and simmer it in a farina boiler with the milk and lemon peel until soft and the milk is absorbed.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and cool the rice slightly.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs and sugar, then heat until it comes to a boil.

Shape and fill

  1. Turn the rice into a round deep dish with a large handle‑less cup in the center.

  2. Smooth the sides of the rice and let it cool.

  3. Once cold, remove the cup and fill the cavity with stewed apricots flavored with lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without whipped cream around the rice.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  5. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Simmered in milk until soft, it forms the body of the dish and sets as it cools.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, giving it a creamy, moist texture.
Eggs
Beaten in and heated to a boil, they thicken the rice and help it hold its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Stewed apricots
Fill the centre with soft, sweet-tart fruit that contrasts with the rice.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture to a boil. Eggs thicken as they heat, but if the rice is boiled too hard or too long after the eggs go in, they can curdle and make the texture grainy. Heat gently while stirring to keep it smooth and set evenly.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes