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Dessert

Rice-cake, with Pine-apple

A baked rice cake mixed with pineapple, served with a sweet apple and pineapple syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 530 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Rice-cake, with Pine-apple

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 the rice and pineapple

  1. Prepare the rice as directed.

  2. Boil the diced pineapple in a mixture of 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar for 10-15 minutes.

  3. Drain the pineapple and mix it with the rice.

Bake the rice cake

  1. Butter a pudding mold and coat it with bread crumbs.

  2. Fill the mold with the rice and pineapple mixture.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Make the apple syrup

  1. Peel the apples.

  2. Cook the apples in 1 pint of syrup until soft.

  3. Strain the apples through a sieve.

  4. Mix the resulting syrup with the pineapple syrup.

  5. Boil the combined syrup until it coats the back of a spoon.

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. Pineapple + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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
Forms the bulk and set structure of the cake as it bakes.
Pineapple
Adds moisture, sweetness and acidity to the rice mixture.
Apples
Cooked down and strained, they add body and fruity flavour to the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pineapple and syrup and helps the syrup thicken when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil the combined syrup until it coats the back of a spoon. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while boiling too long makes it sticky or caramelised.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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