Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Snowball

A rice dessert with apples, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon, steamed in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the rice

  1. In a double boiler, cook the rice with salt, milk, and water until all the liquid is absorbed.

  2. Butter small molds or cups generously.

Assemble and steam

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

  2. Fill the center with a quarter of a sour apple and sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, or lemon juice.

  3. Cover with more rice and steam in a steamer or in a pan of hot water on the stove for 30 minutes.

  4. For better flavor, slightly cook the apples first.

Serve

  1. Serve with a creamy sauce and be careful when removing from the molds to maintain their shape.

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
Cooks into a soft, starchy mass that forms the shell around the apple.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess to the cooked rice.
Sour apples
Provide tartness and moisture that contrast with the sweet, mild rice.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart apple.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until all liquid is absorbed. Rice that is still wet will not hold its shape when unmolded, and it can turn gummy or soggy during steaming. Fully absorbed liquid leaves the starch firm enough to form a stable shell around the apple.

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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes