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Dessert

Apples with Rice

A sweet dish of boiled rice in milk and butter, served with boiled apples and a sugared syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Apples with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil rice in milk with butter, sugar, and lemon rind until soft.

  2. Remove from heat, discard lemon rind, and stir in egg yolk without boiling.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Cook the apples

  1. Peel and core apples; cut 3 into quarters and keep 1 whole.

  2. Boil apples in water and sugar with ginger until soft but not broken.

  3. Reduce syrup by boiling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dish rice in the center of a glass dish.

  2. Arrange apple quarters around the rice.

  3. Place the whole apple on top.

  4. Strain syrup over apples.

  5. Garnish with dried cherries or ginger and angelica.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,196 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole rice
Softens as it simmers in milk, forming the thick, creamy body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create the creamy, tender base of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the rice pudding.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Stirred in off the heat to enrich and thicken the custard-like rice without scrambling.
Apples
Hold their shape when gently boiled, giving texture and fruity sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and forms the syrup that flavours the apples.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk without boiling. If the mixture boils after the egg yolk goes in, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the pudding grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the apple

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

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

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