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Dessert

Apple and Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made with boiled rice, grated apples, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, lemon extract, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apple and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the rice until every grain is separate, then measure it.

  2. Peel and grate the apples, mix them with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with 4 tablespoons of sugar and the whites with 1 tablespoon until stiff.

  4. In a saucepan, heat the milk and salt over boiling water.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk, stir it into the hot milk, and let it come to a boil.

  2. Stir in the yolks, butter, rice, and apples, then remove from heat.

  3. Add the lemon extract, sherry wine, and the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding pan, place it in another pan with boiling water, and bake for 40 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, beaten stiff, lighten the pudding structure.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, set custard that holds the rice and apples.
Boiled rice
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it a soft, substantial texture.
Grated apples
Add moisture, tartness and fruity aroma to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg whites hold their stiff structure.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites last. Whites hold air only while whipped; folding them in gently after the base has cooled slightly keeps the pudding light instead of deflating and becoming dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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