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Dessert

Snow Balls

Apples rolled in milk-soaked rice, boiled, and served with custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Snow Balls

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 ↓

Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Wrap the apples

  1. Roll the peeled and cored apples in the steeped rice to cover them completely.

  2. Tie the rice-covered apples securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the apples for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve the apples with custard poured over them.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  3. Apple + ricetop 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

Apples
Soften as they boil, giving the dish its tender, fruity centre that the rice wraps around.
Whole rice
Swells and softens as it cooks, forming a starchy coating that holds around the apple.

The step that matters

Tie the rice-covered apples securely. The rice coating is not glued to the fruit. If the tie is loose, the rice can loosen and break away in the boiling water, leaving the apple exposed and the shape uneven.

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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