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Dessert

Apples and Rice

A sweet dish of rice cooked in milk with preserved apples, sugar, candied lemon peel, and butter.

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

Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in the new milk until done.

  2. While the rice cooks, heat the preserved apples in the oven.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the rice is cooked, arrange it around a dish.

  2. Place the hot preserved apples in the center of the rice.

  3. Dust sugar over the apples and garnish the rice with candied lemon peel.

  4. Before serving, add pieces of fresh butter on top.

  5. Serve warm.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the milk as it cooks, forming the soft, creamy body of the dish.
New milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture, richness and a tender, creamy texture.
Preserved apples
Provide fruity sweetness and a soft, moist centre contrasting with the rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps caramelise the surface of the apples.
Fresh butter
Melts over the hot dish, adding fat, richness and a smooth finish.

The step that matters

Heat the preserved apples until hot before placing them on the rice. The apples must be served hot so they stay warm against the rice; cooking the rice and apples in time keeps both at the right temperature and texture when served.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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