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Dessert

Apple Snowball

A steamed rice dessert with apple, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon, molded into snowball shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Snowball

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Cook rice in a double boiler with salt, milk, and water until all liquid is absorbed.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter small moulds or cups and line them with ½ inch of hot rice.

  2. Place a quarter of a sour apple in the center and sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, or lemon juice.

  3. Cover the apple with more rice and steam for 30 minutes in a steamer or in a pan of hot water on the stove.

  4. For best results, slightly cook the apples beforehand.

Serve

  1. Serve with a creamy sauce and carefully unmould to maintain shape.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the starchy body that sets around the apple and holds the snowball's shape.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the cooked rice as it absorbs the liquid.
Sour apple
Provides tart, moist filling that contrasts with the sweet, starchy rice.

The step that matters

Slightly cook the apples beforehand. Raw apple releases moisture and keeps its firmness while steaming, so it can make the rice soggy or leave the filling hard. Partial cooking softens the fruit so it heats through evenly with the rice.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, apple, sugar, cinnamon, 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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