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Rice Dumplings

Rice dumplings made with rice, milk, and apples, boiled until soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine rice and milk in a stew pan, keeping it hot but not boiling.

  2. Once the rice has absorbed all the milk, peel the apples and remove the cores.

Assemble and cook

  1. Surround each apple with the rice instead of using pastry.

  2. Tie the apples in dumpling cloths and boil until the apples are soft.

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

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

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the outer casing that replaces pastry and sets around the apple as it cooks.
Milk
Gets absorbed by the rice, softening the grains and giving the casing a creamy texture.
Apples
Provide the filling, becoming soft and sweet as they cook inside the rice.

The step that matters

Keeping the rice hot but not boiling. Gentle heat lets the rice absorb the milk evenly and gradually. Boiling can scorch the milk on the pan base and leave the grains unevenly cooked and sticky.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk. 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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