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Dessert

Rice Apples

A baked dessert of rice, apples, jam, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Rice Apples

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

  1. Boil the rice in milk until tender, about 20 minutes.

  2. Pare and core the apples, then place them in a lightly buttered baking dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each apple cavity with jam or jelly and rich cream.

  2. Surround the apples with the cooked rice, leaving the tops uncovered.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Cover with beaten egg whites, sprinkle with sugar, and return to the oven for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened cream.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk and arranged around the apples, it softens into a creamy, tender base.
Apples
Hold their shape while baking and soften into a tender, fruity centre.
Egg whites
Beaten and spread over the top, they set during baking to form a light, golden crust.
Jam or jelly
Fills the apple cavities, adding sweetness and fruit flavour that melts into the baked apple.
Rich cream
Mixed with the jam in each cavity, it adds fat and richness that softens as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cover with beaten egg whites and return to the oven. Egg whites set when heated, so they need to be beaten and spread evenly over the top. Baking only briefly, as the record specifies, keeps the meringue-style topping golden rather than dry or overcooked.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, cream, egg, 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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