Skip to main content
Dessert

Apples and Rice

A baked apple dish with rice, butter, sugar, and optional raspberry jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Apples and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with the salt, lemon rind, and milk.

  2. Simmer until most of the milk is absorbed and the rice is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter and sugar, then remove the lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Peel and core the apples, placing them in a pie dish.

  2. Fill the cavities of the apples with raspberry jam or a little butter and sugar.

  3. Fill the spaces between the apples with the cooked rice.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the apples are tender but not broken.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Apple + raspberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + milktop 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

Apples
Hold their shape as the structure of the dish while softening to a tender bite.
Rice
Absorbs milk as it simmers, becoming a creamy, starchy filling between the apples.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling and apples brown lightly as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the rice a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Bake until tender but not broken. Apples keep softening in the oven after they are removed, and over-baking makes them collapse. Pulling them when just tender keeps their shape while the flesh stays soft.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, milk, rice, sugar, butter, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRaspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipes