Name: Apple Snow-balls
Ingredients: large apples; ½ cup rice; 1 cup sugar; 1 pint milk; butter the size of a walnut; ½ lemon; 5 eggs; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; granulated sugar for sprinkling

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 ↓

Apple Snow-balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the rice

Pare and core the apples without dividing them.
Cook the rice in boiling salted water for 10 minutes.
In a saucepan, combine the cooked rice, milk, butter, and sugar, and simmer slowly for about 30 minutes until the rice is very soft.
Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Make the mixture

Add the beaten yolks of the eggs, lemon zest, and juice, mixing well.
If the mixture is too firm, add a little cream.
Once cooled, fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Bake and serve

Transfer the mixture to a flat pudding dish or paper cases, and sprinkle granulated sugar on top.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.
Serve immediately to prevent the soufflé from falling.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + walnuttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

Eggs: Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while beaten whites lighten it and help it rise.
Rice: Cooked until very soft, it thickens the milk mixture and gives the filling its body.
Milk: Provides the liquid base that the rice cooks in and that sets into a creamy texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps the mixture stay soft and tender.
Apples: Provide the fruit base and flavor for the dish.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that makes the mixture rise. Overmixing or letting the mixture cool too long before folding deflates the foam, so the soufflé can fall. Baking and serving promptly keeps the risen structure intact.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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