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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

A dessert of apples wrapped in boiled rice, sweetened with sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the rice and spread it on floured cloths.

Wrap and cook the apples

  1. Peel and core the apples, then place them on the rice.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and a little lemon juice over the apples.

  3. Cover each apple entirely with rice and tie the cloths.

  4. 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.

  1. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

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

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. 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

Rice
Forms a starchy coating that holds the apple in a rounded shape while it cooks.
Apples
Provide the fruit filling that softens and sweetens as it cooks inside the rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apple flavour come through during cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour and helps keep the fruit from browning.

The step that matters

Covering each apple entirely with rice. Any bare patch of apple can burst or dry out during boiling, and the rice layer needs to be even to hold the shape. Tie the cloths firmly so the rice stays snug around the fruit as it cooks.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

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