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Baked Apples and Rice Croquettes

A dish of baked apples served with rice croquettes and bits of jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Apples and Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare and core the apples.

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the apples, water, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes, then strain the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the apples for 30 minutes.

  2. Arrange the baked apples on a dish with rice croquettes and bits of jam.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Apple + ricetop 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

Apples
Provide the main body and flavor of the dessert once baked until tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and helps keep the fruit from browning.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, nutmeg, rice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, nutmeg, rice. 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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