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Apricots and Rice

A sweet rice pudding flavored with apricots, lemon rind, and apricot marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apricots and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Combine rice, milk, butter, 2 tablespoons sugar, and the rind of 1 lemon in a lined saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently until the milk is absorbed and the rice is tender.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and stir continuously until cooked.

  4. Remove the lemon rind.

  5. Place a small bowl in the center of a glass dish and pile the rice around it, smoothing it out.

  6. Leave the bowl in until the rice cools.

Prepare and cook the apricots

  1. Pare and stone the apricots.

  2. Make a syrup with the remaining sugar and lemon juice, then boil.

  3. Add the apricots to the boiling syrup and cook for about 5 minutes, adding some chopped kernels for flavor.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the bowl from the rice, add a layer of apricot marmalade and some syrup in the hollow, and pile the apricots in a pyramid on top.

  2. Garnish the rice with the remaining kernels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Rice + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Absorbs the milk and sets into a tender, creamy body for the pudding.
Eggs
Thicken the rice custard as they cook, giving it a set, rich texture.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, providing the liquid that makes the pudding creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and the apricot syrup.
Apricots
Provide fruity flavor and a soft, juicy topping.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs and stir continuously until cooked. Eggs can scramble or curdle if they meet heat too fast. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the eggs thicken the rice smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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