Name: Apple Souffle with Rice
Ingredients: ½ pound rice; milk (enough to cover rice); lemon peel (a little); cinnamon (a small bit); eggs (for egging the dish)

Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Souffle with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the rice in scalding water, then strain it.
Boil the rice in enough milk to cover it, adding lemon peel and cinnamon.
Cook until the rice absorbs the milk.
Transfer the rice to a dish and let it cool.
Form a wall with the rice about 3 inches high, egging the dish first to help it stick.
Smooth the rice to an even surface and egg it all over.

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.

Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,137 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

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