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Dessert

Rice Apples

Apples stuffed with steamed rice, sweetened with sugar, served with cream or maple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Apples

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Core and peel the apples.

  2. Ensure the rice is fully cooked; cold rice can be used.

  3. Spread enough rice on a cloth to cover each apple.

Stuff and cook

  1. Place an apple in the center, fill the core with sugar, and tie the cloth securely around the apple.

  2. Steam, boil, or bake the apples until tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the cloth and serve with sugar and cream, or as a breakfast dish with maple syrup.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apple + maple syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Hold their shape as the structure of the dish while softening to a tender, edible body.
Steamed rice
Forms the filling that wraps around each apple and adds a soft, starchy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple core and adds flavour as it melts into the fruit during cooking.
Cream
Adds richness and a cooling, fatty contrast to the warm, sweet apple.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, the rice can separate from the apple and fall away during steaming, boiling, or baking, leaving the filling uneven and the apple exposed.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Pumpkinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, cream, maple syrup. 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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