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Dessert

Apple Snowball

A dessert of steamed rice and apple, sweetened with sugar, cinnamon, or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Snowball

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the rice in a double boiler with salt, milk, and water until it absorbs all the liquid.

  2. Butter small molds or cups well.

  3. Line the molds with ½ inch of hot rice.

Fill and steam

  1. Core the apple and fill the center with it.

  2. Sprinkle the apple with sugar, cinnamon, or lemon juice.

  3. Cover the apple with more rice.

  4. Steam the filled molds in a steamer or in a pan of hot water on the stove for 30 minutes.

  5. Slightly cook the apples beforehand for best results.

Serve

  1. Serve with a creamy sauce.

  2. Be careful when removing from the mold to maintain their shape.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the outer shell; its starch swells and sets when cooked with liquid, giving the dessert its body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the rice as it cooks.
Apple
Provides moisture and a tart, fruity centre that softens during steaming.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sour apple.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour of the apple.

The step that matters

Removing from the mold. The rice sets as its starch gelatinises and cools, which holds the shape. Handling the molds gently keeps the rice shell from tearing and the apple from slipping out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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