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Rice and Apple

Rice and Apple is a sweet rice dish cooked with apples, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,311 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rice and Apple

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice in several waters.

  2. Boil a few quarts of water.

  3. Add the rice to the boiling water.

  4. Cook for 7-8 minutes.

  5. Drain the rice.

  6. Place the drained rice in a covered vessel by the fire.

  7. Dry and swell the rice for 20 minutes.

  8. Shake the rice occasionally.

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel the apples.

  2. Stew the apples until soft.

  3. Add sugar to the stewed apples.

  4. Mash the apples.

Assemble and serve

  1. Grease a hollow mold.

  2. Fill the mold with the rice.

  3. Top the rice with the mashed apples.

  4. Turn out the mold to 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. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  2. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and sets into a firm shape when cooled in the mold.
Apples
Provide moisture and soft texture, and their flavor when stewed and mashed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the stewed apples.
Butter
Greases the mold so the rice releases cleanly when turned out.

The step that matters

Drain the rice and let it dry and swell. Rice left wet after draining turns gluey, while letting it dry in a covered vessel lets the grains firm and separate so the molded shape holds together.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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