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Dessert

Geneva Pudding

A baked pudding made with rice, apples, butter, cinnamon, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Geneva Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash and drain the rice, then place it in a saucepan with 1 pint of milk and a pinch of salt.

  2. Cook until tender, adding more milk as needed, and sweeten to taste.

  3. While the rice cooks, pare, core, and slice the apples.

Make the apple purée

  1. Combine the apples with the butter, cinnamon, and a tablespoon of sugar in a jar.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan half full of boiling water and cook until the apples are tender.

  3. Rub the apple mixture through a fine sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a fire‑proof china soufflé dish and layer the rice and apple purée alternately, with rice on the bottom and top.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 35 to 40 minutes.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cooking apples
Provide tartness and bulk, breaking down into the purée that gives the pudding its moisture and flavour.
Rice
Absorbs milk as it cooks, forming the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give a creamy texture and carries the sweetness through the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the tart apple flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until fully tender. Rice must soften completely while absorbing milk, since it cannot finish cooking in the oven once layered. Adding milk gradually keeps it from sticking and drying out.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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