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Apples and Rice

A baked dish of apples and rice cooked with milk, butter, sugar, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Apples and Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a saucepan with salt, lemon rind, and milk.

  2. Simmer until most of the milk is absorbed and the rice is tender.

  3. Stir in the butter and sugar, then remove the lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Peel and core the apples, filling the cavities with raspberry jam or a little butter and sugar.

  2. Fill the spaces between the apples with the rice mixture.

  3. Bake in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until the apples are tender but not broken, about 1 hour.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  4. Apple + raspberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  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

Rice
Thickens as it simmers in the milk, giving the filling a creamy, soft body.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, tender filling that sets as it bakes.
Apples
Hold their shape during baking and soften to form the tender fruit base of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the rice mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the rice and apples brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until the apples are tender but not broken. Apples held in a cool oven soften gradually as their cell walls break down. Too much heat or time causes them to collapse and lose their shape, while too little leaves the centres firm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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