Skip to main content
Dessert

Apples and Rice

A baked dessert of apples and rice cooked in milk, sweetened with brown sugar and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Scoop the pulp from the roasted apples.

  2. Sweeten the pulp with brown sugar and grated lemon peel.

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice with the cinnamon stick in the milk until soft and nearly dry.

  3. Remove the cinnamon stick.

  4. Mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the rice mixture over the apples in a dish.

  2. Bake in a Dutch oven until thoroughly heated.

  3. Brown the top with a salamander.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Roasted apples
Provide the fruit base and moisture that flavour the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the rice mixture and give it a rich, set custard texture.
Whole rice
Absorbs milk as it simmers, forming the thick, creamy body of the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy base and adds tenderness.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and adds a caramel-like depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until soft and nearly dry. The rice must absorb most of the milk before the eggs are added. If it is still wet, the pudding will be loose, and adding eggs to very hot liquid can scramble them.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes