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Dessert

Snow Ball Pudding

A rice pudding formed into balls, topped with custard, whipped egg whites, and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Snow Ball Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Boil the rice in the water until absorbed.

  2. Add the milk and boil until the rice is tender, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Add the lemon essence just before removing from heat.

  4. Pour the mixture into teacups and let cool.

  5. Turn out the cooled rice onto a dish.

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a custard with the egg yolks, boiling over hot water until thick.

  2. Let the custard cool before pouring it over the rice balls.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks with a little sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Top each rice ball with the egg white mixture and a little jelly in the center.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Cooked until tender, it forms the body of each pudding and sets as it cools.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to create a creamy, soft texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving it body and richness.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form the light, airy snowy topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over hot water. Egg yolks thicken gently with steady, moderate heat. Overheating can curdle them, so the custard should be stirred and kept over hot water rather than boiling directly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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