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Dessert

Apples with Rice

A baked dish of stewed apples served over cooked rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apples with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples without dividing them.

Make the syrup and stew the apples

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, lemon juice, and water to make a syrup.

  2. Add the apples to the syrup and stew until tender.

Cook the rice

  1. In another saucepan, add rice and milk, and let the rice swell.

  2. Once the rice is tender, remove the lemon peel.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the rice on a dish and arrange the apples on top.

  2. Bake until the apples are lightly browned.

  3. Serve 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 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
Hold their shape while stewing and provide the fruit base of the dish.
Rice
Swells in milk to form a soft, creamy base under the apples.
Milk
Cooks with the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the apples brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and helps keep the apples fresh-tasting.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples until tender. Apples left whole must be cooked through in the syrup before baking, because the oven only browns the surface and will not soften the fruit's interior evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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