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Rice with Apple Compote

Rice topped with a sweet apple compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice with Apple Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, cook sugar and water together for 10 minutes.

Cook the apples

  1. Pare, core, and cut apples into thick round slices.

  2. Add lemon slices to the syrup and cook apples a few slices at a time until all are cooked.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange rice in the bottom of a serving dish.

  2. Overlap apple slices on top of the rice.

  3. Boil the syrup until thick and pour it over the apples.

  4. Cool and serve.

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

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

  2. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, as it thickens, gives the finished glaze body and sheen.
Apples
Provide the main fruit body and tart-sweet flavour, softening as they simmer in the syrup.
Cooked rice
Forms the base layer that holds the apples and soaks up some of the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and helps keep the apple flavour fresh.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and it cools further, so boiling it down gives a glaze that clings to the apples. If it is too thin it runs off and pools under the fruit, and if overcooked it can turn stiff or caramelise.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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