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Dessert

Apple Snow-balls

Apple snow-balls are apples wrapped in rice, boiled, served with a butter-sugar-cornstarch sauce flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Snow-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples and rice

  1. Pare and core the apples without dividing them.

  2. Prepare the rice as directed in a previous recipe.

  3. Enclose each apple separately in the rice.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix a little butter and sugar to a cream.

  2. Cook 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in 2 cups of boiling water.

  3. Add cinnamon to the sauce for flavor.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the apples in rice for 45 minutes.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,311 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Hold their shape inside the rice while cooking and soften into a tender, sweet filling.
Rice
Forms the outer casing that encloses each apple during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a sauce.

The step that matters

Enclosing each apple in the rice. The rice must fully cover each apple so no fruit is exposed. Gaps let the apple break open or lose juice during boiling, which can leave the casing uneven.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, cinnamon. 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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