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Dessert

Apples and Rice, Ornamented

A baked pie crust filled with rice and topped with caramelized apples, apricot jam glaze, preserved cherries, and angelica leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Apples and Rice, Ornamented

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and core the apples, then gently cook them in light syrup for about 10 minutes.

  2. Prepare the rice as for a cake, keeping it firmer than usual.

  3. Bake a circular or oval pie crust about 3 inches high.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the baked pie crust with rice and arrange the apples in a pyramid shape on top.

  2. Mask the dish with diluted apricot jam, place a preserved cherry in each apple, and insert angelica leaves between the apples.

  3. Serve hot, dishing it up shortly before serving.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

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

  2. Apricot + angelicatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Rice + angelicatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

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

  4. Apple + angelicatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the dessert a soft, starchy body under the apples.
Apricot jam
Diluted and brushed over the dish, it adds sweetness and a glossy finish.
Golden pippins (apples)
Gently cooked in syrup, they hold their shape and add fruity sweetness and tartness.

The step that matters

Keeping the rice firm. Rice cooked as for a cake but kept firmer than usual holds its structure under the weight of the apples and stays from turning mushy when baked in the crust.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Angelicathe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, syrup, rice, apricot. 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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