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Dessert

Apple and Rice Pudding

A baked rice pudding flavored with lemon peel, cinnamon, and apple sauce, topped with frothy egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Apple and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the rice base

  1. Combine rice and milk in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil until rice is soft.

  3. Stir in sugar, lemon peel, and cinnamon.

Bake in a mold

  1. Fill a large high mold with the rice mixture.

  2. Place the mold in a saucepan of water.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Turn the rice out onto a dish.

  2. Fill the center with apple sauce.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  4. Spread over the apple sauce.

  5. Dust with powdered sugar.

  6. Lightly brown the top 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. 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 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
Softened in milk to form the pudding's body and set structure.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender base.
Egg whites
Beaten to a foam, they add lightness to the topping and help it brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Lightly brown the top before serving. Egg white topping can overbake and turn tough or dry if left too long. Watching for light golden color lets the sugars brown through Maillard reactions without drying the meringue-like layer.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

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