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Rice with Apples

Rice with apples is a sweet dish of rice cooked with milk, butter, water, apples, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Rice with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in milk until half cooked.

  2. Melt butter in a pan, then add the rice.

  3. Add boiling water and cook slowly until nearly done.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the apples and sugar, then let it boil together.

  2. Shake the pan gently to mix, avoiding stirring to keep the rice intact.

  3. Sprinkle sugar on top and serve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 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
Its starch absorbs the milk and water and softens into a tender, creamy base.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding liquid and richness to the dish.
Butter
Fat that coats the rice grains and adds richness and flavor.
Apples
Soften during cooking and add fruity flavor and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the apples.

The step that matters

Shake the pan instead of stirring. Stirring rubs starch off the rice grains and breaks them apart, making the dish gluey. Gentle shaking mixes the apples and sugar while keeping the grains whole and separate.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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