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Dessert

Apple Trifle

A dessert of boiled apples filled with sugar, wrapped in rice, served with extra sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in the milk with salt until all the milk is absorbed.

  2. If desired, add sugar to the milk while cooking.

Assemble and cook

  1. Pare and core the apples, keeping them whole.

  2. Fill the center of each apple with sugar and add a clove if liked.

  3. Cover the apples with the rice and tie each in a pudding cloth.

  4. Put the cloth-wrapped apples into boiling water and boil gently for 45 to 60 minutes.

  5. Serve with additional sugar.

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. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 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
Swells as it absorbs the milk, forming the thick starchy coating that wraps each apple.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and creaminess to the coating.
Apples
Hold their shape as the core filling softens, providing the fruit centre of the trifle.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple centre and the rice, and caramelises lightly against the fruit as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boiling the cloth-wrapped apples. Boiling too hard can break the rice coating or let the cloth loosen and the apples fall apart. Gentle, steady simmering cooks the apples through while the rice holds its shape.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, apple):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe 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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