Skip to main content
Dessert

Apricots with Rice

A sweet dish of cooked rice served with boiled apricots in a lemon‑sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricots with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice thoroughly.

  2. Scald the rice with hot water.

  3. Drain the rice.

  4. Cool the rice.

Cook the rice

  1. Add the milk, sugar, and salt to the rice.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Beat the rice with a wooden spoon.

Mold and prepare the apricots

  1. Wet an oval mold with water.

  2. Press the rice into the mold.

  3. Keep the mold on ice until needed.

  4. Cut the apricots in halves.

  5. Remove the stones from the apricots.

  6. Boil the apricots in a syrup made of sugar, water, and lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Turn the rice onto a glass dish.

  2. Arrange the apricots around the rice.

  3. Pour the cold syrup over everything.

  4. Serve the dish.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the body of the dish and, once cooked and cooled, sets firm enough to hold a mold shape.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and its proteins help the cooked rice set into a smooth mass.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and the syrup, and helps the syrup coat the apricots.
Apricots
Provide fruity flavour and bright colour as the decorative fruit around the rice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the syrup and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Keep the mold on ice until needed. Chilling lets the starch in the cooked rice set firmly, so the rice holds its shape when turned out onto the dish instead of collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, syrup, apricot. 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes