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Dessert

Apples and Rice

A baked dessert of apples and rice with cinnamon, milk, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Apples and Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Scoop the pulp from the roasted apples and sweeten with brown sugar and grated lemon peel.

  2. Wash the rice and boil it with the cinnamon in the milk until soft and nearly dry.

  3. Remove the cinnamon and mix in the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Bake in a Dutch oven until heated through and brown the top.

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 main fruit base and moisture for the dish.
Whole rice
Softens in milk to thicken the filling into a creamy, spoonable texture.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a soft, creamy base.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to bind the filling and add richness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note to the apples.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until soft and nearly dry. Rice must cook long enough in the milk to soften fully while the liquid thickens. Undercooked rice stays firm, and too much liquid left behind makes the filling runny after baking.

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.

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