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Dessert

A Chartreuse of Apples and Rice

A pastry dish of apples filled with raspberry jam and surrounded by cinnamon‑flavored rice, baked with a sugared egg yolk topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and apple 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 ↓

A Chartreuse of Apples and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rice

  1. Cook the rice with the cinnamon in the milk until thick, stirring in the rose or orange-flower water.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pare the apples, scoop out the cores, and fill them with raspberry jam.

  2. Line a deep dish with pastry, place the apples inside, leaving space between them, and fill the gaps with rice.

  3. Brush the top with the egg yolk and sprinkle sugar thickly over it.

  4. Decorate with sweetmeats and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Apple + raspberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the milk into a soft filling that fills the gaps between the apples.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a thick, creamy custard-like filling.
Apples
Provide the fruit base, holding their shape as they bake around the jam.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour inside each apple as it melts during baking.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top to promote browning of the pastry during baking.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until thick. Rice must be cooked long enough in the milk to swell and thicken fully, because it sets the filling and keeps the gaps between apples from becoming watery or loose during baking.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

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