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Dessert

With Rice

Stewed apples served over rice, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

With Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples without dividing them.

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

  3. Add the apples to the syrup and stew them.

Cook the rice

  1. In another saucepan, add the rice and enough milk to cover it; let the rice swell.

  2. Add sugar to taste and thinly pare the lemon peel, then add it to the rice.

  3. When the rice is tender, remove the lemon peel.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Bake until light brown.

  3. Before serving, put a little preserve on each apple.

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
Form the fruit base, softening as they stew while holding their shape when left whole.
Rice
Starch swells in milk and sets into a tender, creamy base for the apples.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the rice gradually, giving it a soft, creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form the syrup that flavours the apples.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity to the syrup, while the peel adds fragrant aroma to the rice.

The step that matters

Stewing the apples whole. Apples left whole keep their shape in the syrup, but overcooking softens the pectin and cell walls until they collapse. Gentle simmering keeps them tender yet intact for baking.

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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