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Dessert

Apple Snowballs

Whole cored apples, each with sugar and a clove, coated in boiled rice, tied in cloths, and boiled until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Apple Snowballs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice in milk until three-quarters cooked, then strain it.

  2. Pare and core the apples without dividing them.

  3. Place a small amount of sugar and a clove inside each apple.

Cook and serve

  1. Surround each apple with rice and tie each ball in a cloth.

  2. Boil the balls until the apples are tender.

  3. Remove the cloth and serve.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rice + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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 coating that cooks into a soft, cohesive shell around each apple.
Apples
Provide the core of each snowball, softening and becoming sweet and tender as they cook.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture that dissolves into the apple as it cooks.
Cloves
Add a warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the apple while it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the balls until the apples are tender. Rice par-cooked in milk must finish cooking inside the cloth while the apple softens. Boiling too briefly leaves the apple firm, and boiling too hard can burst the cloth or make the rice gluey.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Clovethe 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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