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Dessert

Apple Snowball

A steamed rice dessert with apple, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon, served in molded shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Snowball

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Cook the rice in a double boiler with salt, milk, and water until it absorbs all the liquid.

Fill the molds

  1. Butter small molds or cups generously.

  2. Line the molds with ½ inch of hot rice.

  3. Place a quarter of a sour apple in the center.

  4. Sprinkle the apple with sugar, cinnamon, or lemon juice.

  5. Cover the apple with more rice.

  6. Slightly cook the apples beforehand for better flavor.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the filled molds in a steamer or in a pan of hot water on the stove for 30 minutes.

  2. Be careful when removing from the molds to maintain their shape.

  3. Serve with a creamy sauce.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 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 shell that holds the filling and sets into a molded shape when cooked.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the rice as it cooks and absorbs the liquid.
Sour apple
Provides tart, moist fruit filling that contrasts with the sweet, mild rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sour apple.

The step that matters

Removing the snowballs from the molds. Rice holds its shape only when it has cooled and set enough to bind; removing it too early can cause it to break apart and lose its form.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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