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Dessert

Bummbr Snowballs

A baked apple dumpling filled with rice, sugar, and allspice, served with sweet sauce, sugar, or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and allspice work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 998 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Bummbr Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Simmer the rice until tender, then strain it.

  2. Pare the apples and remove the cores without cutting them into sections.

  3. Fill the hollow of each apple with sugar and a little allspice.

Wrap and cook

  1. Divide the rice into portions and cover each apple with a portion, then tie them in small cloths.

  2. Boil the wrapped apples for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce, sugar, or molasses.

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 + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together998 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

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

  3. Rice + allspicetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,938 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 wrapping that cooks into a tender, cohesive coating around each apple.
Apples
Provide the main body and tart flavour, softening as they cook inside the wrapping.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple filling and helps it caramelise slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Tying the cloths. If the rice wrapping is loose or thin in places, the filling can leak or the apple can burst while boiling. Wrap evenly and tie firmly so the rice holds its shape and seals the fruit.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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