Name: Apples with Rice
Ingredients: 1 cup rice; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 6 apples, peeled, quartered, and cored; Sugar to taste; Ground cinnamon to taste; Cream for serving

Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apples with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

Boil the rice in water or milk in a frying kettle.
Grease the kettle with butter before adding the rice.
Season the rice with salt and add a lump of butter.

Finish and serve

When cooked, add the apples, sugar, and cinnamon.
Serve as a side dish or dessert with cream.

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.

Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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: Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the cooking liquid, giving it a soft, starchy body.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping keep the rice from sticking.
Apples: Provide tender pieces and natural sweetness and tartness that contrast with the rice.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Raisinfits about as well
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, cinnamon, 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.