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Rice Snow Balls

Rice snow balls are rice mixed with a lemon-flavored custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Rice Snow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice in water with salt until soft.

  2. Fill small cups with the rice and let it cool completely.

  3. Turn the rice out onto a dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, milk, cornstarch, and lemon flavoring.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until it thickens like soft custard.

Serve

  1. Pour the custard over the rice 30 minutes 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 the body of each snowball, soaking up water and holding its shape when cooled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard so it coats the rice rather than running off.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too fast. Low heat and constant stirring let the proteins set smoothly, giving a soft, even custard that thickens as the starch gelatinizes.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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