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Dessert

Rice and Apple Souffle

A baked soufflé made from rice and apple purée, sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon rind, clove, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rice and Apple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the apple purée

  1. Cook the apples with 2 tablespoons of water, moist sugar, butter, lemon rind, clove, and cinnamon in a jar placed in a saucepan of boiling water until soft.

  2. Rub the cooked apples through a fine sieve.

Make the rice base

  1. Mix the ground rice smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk, add the blended rice and milk, and simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar, let the mixture cool slightly, then add each egg yolk separately, and beat well.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a well-greased soufflé dish with alternate layers of rice and apple purée, piling each layer of rice in a pyramidal form.

  2. Dredge well with castor sugar and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cooking apples
Provide the tart fruit flavour and the purée that gives moisture between the rice layers.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk into a set base that gives the soufflé its body.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the base, and whisked whites lift the mixture to make it light.
Milk
Cooked with the ground rice to form a thick custard-like base with moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the apples.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and, dredged on top, helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be stiffly whisked and folded gently so the air is kept; overmixing deflates the foam and the soufflé will rise poorly and turn heavy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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