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Dessert

Stewed Apples and Rice

A baked dish of apples stewed in lemon‑sugar syrup with rice and jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Peel the apples and remove the cores without damaging their shape.

  3. Place the apples in a deep baking dish.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling sugar with the juice of one lemon.

  2. If the syrup is thin, boil it until thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the syrup over the apples and bake slowly until soft but not broken.

  2. Remove the lemon peel and fill each apple with a little jam.

  3. Add a small heap of well-boiled rice between each apple.

  4. Pour the syrup gently over the apples to cover the rice.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar 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

Good baking apples
Hold their shape while baking, becoming soft and tender without breaking apart.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps it thicken as it boils down.
Jam
Adds concentrated sweetness and fruity flavour to the centre of each apple.
Well-boiled rice
Fills the spaces between apples, adding body and absorbing the syrup.
1 lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances the flavour.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until soft but not broken. Gentle heat softens the apple's pectin and starch gradually, so the flesh turns tender while the cell walls stay intact and the shape holds. Fast, high heat can split the skins and collapse the fruit into a mush.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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