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Dessert

Summer Snowballs

A boiled apple stuffed with rice, sugar, and allspice.

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 ↓

Summer Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Pare the apples.

  3. Remove the cores without cutting them into sections.

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

Assemble

  1. Divide the rice into portions.

  2. Cover each apple with rice.

  3. Tie each apple in a small cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. 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

Apples
Firm flesh holds the shape during boiling and softens into a tender, juicy fruit.
Rice
Cooked starchy grains form a soft coating around each apple and absorb its juices.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple and dissolves into the juices collecting in the cavity.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the filling and the rice.

The step that matters

Remove the cores without cutting them into sections. Keeping the apple whole holds the sugar and spice inside the cavity and keeps the fruit from splitting or falling apart while it boils in the cloth.

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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