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Dessert

Snowballs, Rice

Rice snowballs stuffed with apples, flavored with lemon rind or cinnamon, served with powdered sugar and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Snowballs, Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice and apples

  1. Wash the rice in two or three waters and remove any imperfect grains.

  2. Boil the rice in a saucepan of fast-boiling water for 10 minutes, then drain and cool.

  3. Pare the apples and carefully remove the cores without dividing them.

  4. Fill the hollow of each apple with a little grated lemon rind or cinnamon and sugar.

Form the snowballs

  1. Divide the rice into portions equal to the number of apples and spread each portion in a circular shape on a separate cloth.

  2. Place an apple in the center of each rice portion and tie the cloth to cover the apple with rice.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the puddings in water, keeping them boiling quickly until cooked, about 1.5 hours.

  2. Turn the snowballs onto a hot dish, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve with melted butter.

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 + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 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

Rice
Forms the starchy outer coating that wraps and holds each apple while it cooks.
Baking apples
Soften during boiling and provide the moist, sweet fruit filling inside the rice.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Keep the water fast-boiling during cooking. A vigorous boil keeps the water temperature high and steady, so the rice and apples cook through evenly. Weak simmering lets the cloth-wrapped puddings cool and cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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