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Dessert

Rice Snowballs

Rice snowballs are rice balls filled with apples, butter, sugar, and lemon rind or cinnamon, served with sweet sauce, wine sauce, or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rice Snowballs

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 ↓

Rice Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Wash the rice and boil it in enough milk and water to cover for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the rice and let it cool.

Prepare the apples

  1. Pare the apples and scoop out the cores without breaking them.

  2. Fill the cores with butter, sugar, and lemon rind or cinnamon.

Wrap and boil

  1. Flour small cloths and spread rice on each, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place an apple on the rice and tie the cloth securely.

  3. Boil the puddings in water for about 1 hour until done.

  4. Serve with sweet sauce, wine sauce, or custard.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 the tender outer coating that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding richness and a soft, creamy texture.
Apples
Provide the fruit centre that softens and becomes sweet and tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds fat to the filling, giving moisture and a rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose or the seal is weak, rice can escape and water can enter during boiling, so the pudding may fall apart or become soggy. A firm, snug wrap keeps the rice coating even and the apple intact.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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