Name: Apple Snowballs
Ingredients: ½ pound best rice; 1-2 apples; sugar; lemon juice

Why it works: Rice and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Apple Snowballs

Ingredients

½ pound best rice
1-2 apples
sugar
lemon juice

Directions

Prepare the rice

Boil the rice in water for 15-20 minutes.
Strain the rice and spread it on floured cloths.

Wrap and cook

Peel and core the apples, placing them on the rice.
Sprinkle sugar and lemon juice over the apples.
Cover each apple entirely with rice and tie the cloths.
Boil the wrapped apples for 1 hour.

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.

Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,311 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Best rice: Forms the outer coating that holds each apple together as it cooks.
Apples: Provide the fruit filling at the centre of each snowball.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to the apples as they cook.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the apples.