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Rice Snow Balls

Rice snow balls are rice balls topped with a sweet custard flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice with salt until soft.

  2. Spoon the rice into small cups.

  3. Let the rice cups cool.

Make the custard

  1. Whisk together the egg yolks, sweet milk, and corn starch in a saucepan over low heat until thickened.

  2. Flavor the custard with lemon.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Serve

  1. Pour the custard over the rice balls half an hour before serving.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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 soft, bulky base that holds the custard in each snow ball.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard and adds sweetness and creaminess.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and yolk mixture so the custard holds its shape.

The step that matters

Whisk the custard over low heat until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high. Gentle, constant whisking over low heat lets the starch and yolks thicken evenly into a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, milk, corn):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, milk, corn. 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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