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Dessert

A Pretty Dish of Apples and Rice

A dessert of rice and apples baked with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Pretty Dish of Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Flavor the milk with lemon rind by boiling together for a few minutes, then remove the peel.

  2. Add the rice and sufficient sugar to sweeten.

  3. Boil gently until the rice is soft.

  4. Let the rice cool.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare, quarter, and core the apples.

  2. Boil the apples in a syrup made with sugar and water until tender.

  3. Drain the apples.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a medium-sized bowl in the center of a dish.

  2. Surround it with the rice, smoothing the top.

  3. Insert the apples into the rice in rows, alternating the direction.

  4. Bake in the oven until the apples are colored.

  5. Remove the bowl.

  6. Garnish with preserved fruits.

  7. Pour custard into the center until level with the rice.

  8. Serve hot.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  4. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + appletop 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

Rice
Cooked soft in sweetened milk to form the pudding base that sets as it cools.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form the creamy body of the pudding.
Apples
Hold their shape when simmered in syrup and brown in the oven for flavor and color.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and the apple syrup, and aids browning of the apples.
Boiled custard
Adds a smooth, rich sauce that moistens the center of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are colored. Sugar caramelizes and the surface browns through the Maillard reaction, so the apples need enough time for color without drying the rice beneath them.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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