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Rice Toad-in-the-hole

A baked rice pudding with apples, sugar, cinnamon, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Rice Toad-in-the-hole

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.

Prepare and assemble

  1. Prepare the rice as you would for Baked Rice Pudding.

  2. Place the cooked rice in a baking dish.

  3. Peel and slice the apples, then lay them in the rice.

  4. Sift sugar and cinnamon over the apples.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. 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 and body of the dish, holding the apples and sugar together.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness as they soften and release juice during baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top turn golden as it caramelises in the oven.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour that pairs with the sweet apples.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Sugar browns quickly at oven heat, so the top can scorch before the apples are tender. Checking the color during baking helps achieve even browning.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Coconutbetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, cinnamon, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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