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Rice Pudding with Apples

A custard rice pudding layered with apple compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Pudding with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a compote of sliced apples.

  2. Boil the rice with milk until soft and creamy.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by mixing milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and mace.

  2. Combine the custard with the rice.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the rice custard and apples in a pudding dish, placing rice on the bottom and top.

  2. Bake until the custard is set.

  3. Serve with wine or cream sauce, hot or cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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

Egg yolks
Set the custard into a sliceable structure as they cook and coagulate.
Rice
Provides the bulk and body of the pudding, absorbing milk as it softens.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that cooks the rice and forms the custard base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.
Apples
Add moisture and a fruity, tart contrast to the rich custard.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is set. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the pudding runny, while overbaking can make the custard grainy or curdled.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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